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

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Priority needs to be to keep teachers in-person at school. If you want virtual school for your kid, then go private.

You are fooled by MCPS if you think they will have money to keep the teachers after shutting down programs.

Here is what MCEA has shared earlier -

“ payments for contractual services have ballooned by 42% to $100 million in the proposed FY25 budget. These services should be reduced significantly before any cuts to the classroom can be seriously considered. Examples include:

1. $4.5 million in building rental fees (including new executive offices)
2. $1,031,000 in consultant fees (not comprehensive)
3. $850,000 in recycling fees paid to Montgomery County (why doesn't the county just take care of recycling?)
4. $809,717 in outside attorney fees (MCPS has a substantial in-house legal
team.)
5. $525,000 for "random requests that come up and funding is needed"
6. Plus, an additional $13 million in unspecified contractual sevices that MCPS still has not explained”

They didn’t review any of the above but as you may already know teachers will get involuntarily transferred - decisions will be made as of today and process done by end of the week.

It’s obviously BOE/MCPS management problem!!

Plus, please review the actual budget breakdown. Under Other Contractual Services, there are other instructional costs, all miscellaneous but requesting an almost double, 100% increase of 10M totaling over 21M. Is this more questionable than going after this group?

Entrepreneurial ACTIVITIES funds also got similar increase from 6M previous year to totaling over 11M this upcoming year. Is it mandatory and should the “activities” fund taking priority over education for our kids and over the already short staff teachers?

How would putting those MVA kids to private help the disaster happening right now? All families with kids in MCPS are suffering! So are the teachers!!

I agree that the MVA is the first of many cuts the county should be making to the MCPS budget.

Why? ever consider the impact on the kids? Kids needs should come first.

Consider the impact of the cuts they'd have to make if they don't cut MVA.

No impact. $30M is nothing to MCPS and easily eliminated from spending without any impact on classrooms.

Come up an alternative set of $30M in cuts that doesn't involve taking away special education resources and instructional supports.

When they are taking away the MVA, they are taking away special education services for students.

One has nothing to do with the other.

There's at least one MVA supporter here that has been arguing to cancel contracted services that currently provide, among other things, speech therapy to many students in the district.

No one is arguing to cancel speech services but if you were a smart parent you wouldn't exclusively rely on them and also get private.

So, what do you think will happen to these kids who cannot go in person. They will go from a full academic schedule to IIS which is a few hours a week. You think that's ok?

Sounds like you need to take your own advice and go private. I think many will agree that IIS could use improvements. But there are a lot of families in MVA for other reasons that wouldnt even qualify for that. Not sure what camp yours falls into.

ISS could use improvement. They provide a few hours a week of tutoring. That's not an education. Most families cannot afford private. And, it would be near impossible to get a private school spot at this point.

Then your choices are in-person or homeschooling. What's more important to you: your kids' education, or your own anxiety over covid?

Covid is not the concern. You simply don't get it and want to make assumptions about all the students in the MVA.

Not the students. They're not there by choice. The question is why the parents are doing that to them.

Just because your kids wouldn't choose it, doesn't mean other kids wouldn't. You are advocating its closure for your own interests, not the best interests of the students in it. I'm sorry you couldn't make virtual work. It takes a lot of parental involvement. Not all kids are fortunate enough to have involved parents.

My interest lies in identifying programs that are failures and cutting them to free up funds for programs that are working. All available data shows that the NCS is worse at educating kids than in-person schools, especially elementary aged kids and poor kids, and has a much higher rate of chronic absenteeism than in-person school.

Your family seems to be an exception to this objective, broad-based data. But we can’t throw $5M at a program because it works for some people based on whatever standard of “it works” those people have in their minds.

And you’re right. Not all MVA families choose it because of Covid concerns. One prevalent concern I’ve seen from MVA families is with their kid being bullied at in-person school. Which is why I always find it fascinating that some mva supporters routinely resort to personal attacks and bullying of other parents as “too lazy to get the best out of virtual” or “maybe if you spent more time with your kids you wouldn’t be so mean” etc.

[Anonymous]

This article casts the MVA families in an unflattering light. An ADHD diagnosis is not a compelling reason to insist that MCPS must continue to offer virtual instructional model or else risk the health and wellbeing of your child.....

https://moco360.media/2024/06/03/mcps-virtual-academy-families-stage-sit-in-to-protest-loss-of-program/

[Anonymous]

People keep mentioning attendance being poor in the Virtual Academy. My question is - how will making them go in-person improve their attendance? What strategies does the home school have that will improve this.? How is the county going to support these families? There is no plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This article casts the MVA families in an unflattering light. An ADHD diagnosis is not a compelling reason to insist that MCPS must continue to offer virtual instructional model or else risk the health and wellbeing of your child.....

https://moco360.media/2024/06/03/mcps-virtual-academy-families-stage-sit-in-to-protest-loss-of-program/

Oof. “My fear is that they are going to go to the brick-and-mortar [school] and it’s going to be all about the fashion, all about everything else … and they are going to lose the whole focus.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article casts the MVA families in an unflattering light. An ADHD diagnosis is not a compelling reason to insist that MCPS must continue to offer virtual instructional model or else risk the health and wellbeing of your child.....

https://moco360.media/2024/06/03/mcps-virtual-academy-families-stage-sit-in-to-protest-loss-of-program/

Oof. “My fear is that they are going to go to the brick-and-mortar [school] and it’s going to be all about the fashion, all about everything else … and they are going to lose the whole focus.”

Oh boy....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This article casts the MVA families in an unflattering light. An ADHD diagnosis is not a compelling reason to insist that MCPS must continue to offer virtual instructional model or else risk the health and wellbeing of your child.....

https://moco360.media/2024/06/03/mcps-virtual-academy-families-stage-sit-in-to-protest-loss-of-program/

This one is much better, I think.
https://www.fox5dc.com/video/1465299

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We don't need to waste money on things like this. Public school is there already. Take or leave it.

Do you miss the 1950's?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It's funny, as the MVA gets the fewest complaints and in person get the highest complaints. Lets shut down the schools with the highest complaints.

Posts like this are why the petition isn't getting a lot of traction among non-MVA folks. The proponents just seem so genuinely unlikeable and unkind.

No, folks saying shut it down are unkind as they are more focused on their wants than students needs and they have no ability to put others needs ahead of their wants. The MVA is working for the students in the MVA. You think it's fair to force kids who were bulled to go back to the school they were bullied at to get bullied again since MCPS and parents don't care if the bullies are horrible to other kids? As a parent would you send your child to a school where they are relentlessly bullied every day. Not all parents can afford to pull their kids out of MCPS and go private.

So homeschool or move somewhere else with a permanent virtual program. The only reason you got this virtual MCPS experiment to begin with was because of the pandemic. You need to step up as a parent and figure it out.

As a parent, we did step up and figure it out. We figured it out years ago. Why couldn't you step up during virtual as a parent so your child could have been as successful as ours our virtually?

Ooh that’s good, you got me. We figured it out just fine thank you, I held my August kiddo back a year so that we didn’t have to endure “virtual kindergarten.” Heard it was a blast though.

It was actually fine. We did it in a language we don’t even speak at home! Hopefully everything works out well for your kid too.

That's not fine. Your kid will be too old for their grade and 19 in HS. That was about your needs, not their. Mine are doing great. Thanks for asking.

No no—you’re confused. My child went to kindergarten at the appropriate age. PP redshirted their child because the kid was not able to tolerate virtual K. Or the parents weren’t. One or the other.

No, PP did not even try to work with their child to make virtual work. They just held them back being lazy.

I don't know why anyone would want to brag about doing virtual kindergarten. My now third grader still kind of bemoans what a waste of an experience it was even though she adores her kindergarten teacher and still goes back and gives the teacher a hugs. Her kindergarten teacher even invited her to come down and volunteer in her class.

[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:Priority needs to be to keep teachers in-person at school. If you want virtual school for your kid, then go private.

You are fooled by MCPS if you think they will have money to keep the teachers after shutting down programs.

Here is what MCEA has shared earlier -

“ payments for contractual services have ballooned by 42% to $100 million in the proposed FY25 budget. These services should be reduced significantly before any cuts to the classroom can be seriously considered. Examples include:

1. $4.5 million in building rental fees (including new executive offices)
2. $1,031,000 in consultant fees (not comprehensive)
3. $850,000 in recycling fees paid to Montgomery County (why doesn't the county just take care of recycling?)
4. $809,717 in outside attorney fees (MCPS has a substantial in-house legal
team.)
5. $525,000 for "random requests that come up and funding is needed"
6. Plus, an additional $13 million in unspecified contractual sevices that MCPS still has not explained”

They didn’t review any of the above but as you may already know teachers will get involuntarily transferred - decisions will be made as of today and process done by end of the week.

It’s obviously BOE/MCPS management problem!!

Plus, please review the actual budget breakdown. Under Other Contractual Services, there are other instructional costs, all miscellaneous but requesting an almost double, 100% increase of 10M totaling over 21M. Is this more questionable than going after this group?

Entrepreneurial ACTIVITIES funds also got similar increase from 6M previous year to totaling over 11M this upcoming year. Is it mandatory and should the “activities” fund taking priority over education for our kids and over the already short staff teachers?

How would putting those MVA kids to private help the disaster happening right now? All families with kids in MCPS are suffering! So are the teachers!!

I agree that the MVA is the first of many cuts the county should be making to the MCPS budget.

Why? ever consider the impact on the kids? Kids needs should come first.

Consider the impact of the cuts they'd have to make if they don't cut MVA.

No impact. $30M is nothing to MCPS and easily eliminated from spending without any impact on classrooms.

Come up an alternative set of $30M in cuts that doesn't involve taking away special education resources and instructional supports.

When they are taking away the MVA, they are taking away special education services for students.

One has nothing to do with the other.

There's at least one MVA supporter here that has been arguing to cancel contracted services that currently provide, among other things, speech therapy to many students in the district.

No one is arguing to cancel speech services but if you were a smart parent you wouldn't exclusively rely on them and also get private.

So, what do you think will happen to these kids who cannot go in person. They will go from a full academic schedule to IIS which is a few hours a week. You think that's ok?

Sounds like you need to take your own advice and go private. I think many will agree that IIS could use improvements. But there are a lot of families in MVA for other reasons that wouldnt even qualify for that. Not sure what camp yours falls into.

ISS could use improvement. They provide a few hours a week of tutoring. That's not an education. Most families cannot afford private. And, it would be near impossible to get a private school spot at this point.

Then your choices are in-person or homeschooling. What's more important to you: your kids' education, or your own anxiety over covid?

Covid is not the concern. You simply don't get it and want to make assumptions about all the students in the MVA.

Not the students. They're not there by choice. The question is why the parents are doing that to them.

Just because your kids wouldn't choose it, doesn't mean other kids wouldn't. You are advocating its closure for your own interests, not the best interests of the students in it. I'm sorry you couldn't make virtual work. It takes a lot of parental involvement. Not all kids are fortunate enough to have involved parents.

My interest lies in identifying programs that are failures and cutting them to free up funds for programs that are working. All available data shows that the NCS is worse at educating kids than in-person schools, especially elementary aged kids and poor kids, and has a much higher rate of chronic absenteeism than in-person school.

Your family seems to be an exception to this objective, broad-based data. But we can’t throw $5M at a program because it works for some people based on whatever standard of “it works” those people have in their minds.

And you’re right. Not all MVA families choose it because of Covid concerns. One prevalent concern I’ve seen from MVA families is with their kid being bullied at in-person school. Which is why I always find it fascinating that some mva supporters routinely resort to personal attacks and bullying of other parents as “too lazy to get the best out of virtual” or “maybe if you spent more time with your kids you wouldn’t be so mean” etc.

You have no data and multiple mcps schools have serious issues so those should also close.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don't need to waste money on things like this. Public school is there already. Take or leave it.

Do you miss the 1950's?

Right? I wonder what the debate was like back during the Polio outbreak when remote learning was on the radio.

[Anonymous]

I guess that I don’t understand people’s objections to the Virtual Academy. Most states provide a virtual option and the cost per pupil is lower. No building, no transportation, etc. The reasons why families might choose the MVA are immaterial and you don’t have to agree with them. It makes families happy and it costs less = no brainer…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People keep mentioning attendance being poor in the Virtual Academy. My question is - how will making them go in-person improve their attendance? What strategies does the home school have that will improve this.? How is the county going to support these families? There is no plan.

And many families self selected MVA because it better supported their kids medical needs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article casts the MVA families in an unflattering light. An ADHD diagnosis is not a compelling reason to insist that MCPS must continue to offer virtual instructional model or else risk the health and wellbeing of your child.....

https://moco360.media/2024/06/03/mcps-virtual-academy-families-stage-sit-in-to-protest-loss-of-program/

Oof. “My fear is that they are going to go to the brick-and-mortar [school] and it’s going to be all about the fashion, all about everything else … and they are going to lose the whole focus.”

Oh boy....

There’s a photo of a parent holding a sippy cup for their kid to drink from. I honestly have to wonder about the reality of some of the family dynamics of the MVA kids. Parents care about their kids but maybe they are caring about them in the wrong way.

[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:Priority needs to be to keep teachers in-person at school. If you want virtual school for your kid, then go private.

You are fooled by MCPS if you think they will have money to keep the teachers after shutting down programs.

Here is what MCEA has shared earlier -

“ payments for contractual services have ballooned by 42% to $100 million in the proposed FY25 budget. These services should be reduced significantly before any cuts to the classroom can be seriously considered. Examples include:

1. $4.5 million in building rental fees (including new executive offices)
2. $1,031,000 in consultant fees (not comprehensive)
3. $850,000 in recycling fees paid to Montgomery County (why doesn't the county just take care of recycling?)
4. $809,717 in outside attorney fees (MCPS has a substantial in-house legal
team.)
5. $525,000 for "random requests that come up and funding is needed"
6. Plus, an additional $13 million in unspecified contractual sevices that MCPS still has not explained”

They didn’t review any of the above but as you may already know teachers will get involuntarily transferred - decisions will be made as of today and process done by end of the week.

It’s obviously BOE/MCPS management problem!!

Plus, please review the actual budget breakdown. Under Other Contractual Services, there are other instructional costs, all miscellaneous but requesting an almost double, 100% increase of 10M totaling over 21M. Is this more questionable than going after this group?

Entrepreneurial ACTIVITIES funds also got similar increase from 6M previous year to totaling over 11M this upcoming year. Is it mandatory and should the “activities” fund taking priority over education for our kids and over the already short staff teachers?

How would putting those MVA kids to private help the disaster happening right now? All families with kids in MCPS are suffering! So are the teachers!!

I agree that the MVA is the first of many cuts the county should be making to the MCPS budget.

Why? ever consider the impact on the kids? Kids needs should come first.

Consider the impact of the cuts they'd have to make if they don't cut MVA.

No impact. $30M is nothing to MCPS and easily eliminated from spending without any impact on classrooms.

Come up an alternative set of $30M in cuts that doesn't involve taking away special education resources and instructional supports.

When they are taking away the MVA, they are taking away special education services for students.

One has nothing to do with the other.

There's at least one MVA supporter here that has been arguing to cancel contracted services that currently provide, among other things, speech therapy to many students in the district.

No one is arguing to cancel speech services but if you were a smart parent you wouldn't exclusively rely on them and also get private.

So, what do you think will happen to these kids who cannot go in person. They will go from a full academic schedule to IIS which is a few hours a week. You think that's ok?

Sounds like you need to take your own advice and go private. I think many will agree that IIS could use improvements. But there are a lot of families in MVA for other reasons that wouldnt even qualify for that. Not sure what camp yours falls into.

ISS could use improvement. They provide a few hours a week of tutoring. That's not an education. Most families cannot afford private. And, it would be near impossible to get a private school spot at this point.

Then your choices are in-person or homeschooling. What's more important to you: your kids' education, or your own anxiety over covid?

Covid is not the concern. You simply don't get it and want to make assumptions about all the students in the MVA.

Not the students. They're not there by choice. The question is why the parents are doing that to them.

Just because your kids wouldn't choose it, doesn't mean other kids wouldn't. You are advocating its closure for your own interests, not the best interests of the students in it. I'm sorry you couldn't make virtual work. It takes a lot of parental involvement. Not all kids are fortunate enough to have involved parents.

My interest lies in identifying programs that are failures and cutting them to free up funds for programs that are working. All available data shows that the NCS is worse at educating kids than in-person schools, especially elementary aged kids and poor kids, and has a much higher rate of chronic absenteeism than in-person school.

Your family seems to be an exception to this objective, broad-based data. But we can’t throw $5M at a program because it works for some people based on whatever standard of “it works” those people have in their minds.

And you’re right. Not all MVA families choose it because of Covid concerns. One prevalent concern I’ve seen from MVA families is with their kid being bullied at in-person school. Which is why I always find it fascinating that some mva supporters routinely resort to personal attacks and bullying of other parents as “too lazy to get the best out of virtual” or “maybe if you spent more time with your kids you wouldn’t be so mean” etc.

You have no data and multiple mcps schools have serious issues so those should also close.

The board discussed the attendance problems, and lower overall test scores. There were also some equity concerns since the program was 35% African American. It’s easier to meet student needs in person.

[Anonymous]

Easier? With what staff?