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Anonymous wrote:He has a lot of problems to fix. Hard to blame him for that. MCPS behaved recklessly when MD had a budget surplus. The $$$$ spent on legal fees are not his fault. I’m still not sure what I think of him but he can only do so much
+1
I think the programs proposal is an ambitious move that could have moved the needle to fixing some things, but has been so poorly thought through and so rushed that he’ll ruin what goodwill he could have had if it’s implemented. He strikes me as a sincere and good person though.
He's not sincere. He's a showman which is why he was hired. He's changing things for the sake of change, not to make them better.
Yeah, there's some misdirection going on, too, pulling people's attention with promises of paraeducators while actually gutting special education programs across the district. It is pretty hard for school districts to lose due process proceedings, but I think he's setting things up for that.
Its near impossible to get any help from MCPS and they spend more time fighting parents than helping.
In many cases, those parents want things that contradict what the political masters of MCPS want.
Most parents want their kids reading and writing on grade level.
Not here in Lake Wobegon.
Seriously, though, and understanding the considerable difficulties experienced (kids, families & teachers/admin) in educating a large portion of the MCPS student population to that standard, when "on grade level" is redefined/implemented as below that which many, if not most, would expect from the combination of their own experience and the anecdotes of others they know in good schools, and when the differentiation (and identification for that) needed to mitigate that is implemented inconsistently (sometimes not at all due to school funding allocation algorithms vs. difficult cohorts), this kind of conflict becomes inevitable.
But then why do parents keep blaming school systems instead of counties, states, and our federal governments. Not to mention ourselves. On one had we say we want our kids to have the best of everything especially schools, but then in the next we want to cut taxes. When people say fine, then that means we also need to cut programs and services like sports, arts, and yes extra supports, then there are still complaints.
Even now we have a community in MCPS complaining about getting a new school.
Mcps is one of the highest per pupil funded school systems. It’s mismanagement.
MCPS isn't even one of the highest in the state of Maryland, it's like #5 plus another 3 are like a whisker below them:
https://dls.maryland.gov/pubs/prod/NoPblTabPDF/2025PerPupilStateandLocal.pdf
MCPS makes bad choices and I don't blame people for not wanting to hand them more money... but also if someone wanted a magic wand and suddenly Central Office was filled with people doing a perfect job and making the most of every dollar, that would still likely only save a couple percent from the budget at most, and we would still need to invest much more to make the big changes we need like decreasing class sizes, recruiting and retaining more good teachers, providing the supports needed to help kids who are behind and/or who have special needs, etc.
In other words, two things can be true: 1) MCPS Central Office sucks, but also 2) MCPS needs more money if we want it to do a better job of educating kids, in amounts much higher than can be recovered from any wasteful spending. The fact that #1 makes it less likely that people will support #2 is one of the many reasons MCPS central office pisses me off so much.
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