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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How has keeping your kids locked at home been normalized by a small, but vocal, part of society? That would have been considered outrageous child abuse when I grew up.

Why are you so invested in what others do? Focus on your own kids. Kids are not locked at home.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If you are dead set that your kid needs virtual education and you refuse to consider other options, perhaps move to Florida. Apparently they have a Va run by the state that fits what you are looking for

+1. It’s very strange to me that it’s all or nothing for the MVA advocates. Maybe it speaks to the fact that it was a very niche, small program with essentially private tutoring, and the other available programs won’t have that. If simply having a virtual education was their #1 priority, they’d be making arrangements for their child to attend another program.

+2 The alternative to MVA isn't IIS, it's an appropriate in-person placement. Depending on the child, that might take a lot of different forms.

If a child was in MVA because their family wanted to be able to travel freely to Disneyland on the off-season, that child can return to a regular classroom.

If a child was in MVA due to bullying, the answer might be a COSA, but it's also worth considering that a child who entered MVA in 1st grade would be entering 6th next year. That's a whole new peer group and dynamic.

If a child was in MVA due to anxiety/rigidity, there are accommodations, interventions, and in-school placements that can help move the needle on those issues.

You have no idea what you are talking about. If those options were viable, MVA families would have gladly used them. Having your child attend virtual school requires more work for the parent. It involves supervision and controlling gadgets/technologies, arranging social activities to ensure your child is not isolated. It is definitely much easier to just send them in person. Why do you think MVA families advocated so much for the school? They really do not have any other options other than private online programs, which not everyone can afford.

How is in-person school not viable for the mom quoted in recent press articles as needing MVA for her daughters because they would otherwise be too distracted by fashion if they went in-person?

Maybe, for that one family, an in-person option would work. But what about the girl with medically resistant epilepsy who had a seizure in the school building and fell down the stairs, injuring herself? Or the suicidal teen who wanted to drop out of high school but is now considering attending college? I can provide you with many examples and quotes. These are real families with kids who were in MVA for various reasons, but they all absolutely thrived. If you are an MVA teacher reading this, thank you for your amazing work. What happened is so terribly sad, but you have truly touched those kids' hearts and changed their lives.

So where do we draw the line? Serving 800 students is too expensive when the cohort includes the kids who are using MVA because it’s a nice option for them. Do we add some sort of medical criteria to make sure the kids who truly need it get it and we don’t spend money on a virtual program for kids who should be back in-person?

Making it smaller would make it even more expensive on a per pupil basis. And give it fewer stakeholders.

Maybe it would be more expensive, maybe not if you take out the costs associated with all the kids who didnt really need it and would return to school.

We spend more money on a per pupil basis on certain populations all the time anyway. Poor kids get wrap around services at community schools, for example. Recent immigrants get English language learning services. Special needs children get specialized instruction from separate staff. Delayed talkers and readers get speech therapy and literacy intervention. High achievers get separate magnet programs. None of that is free and all of it adds to the per pupil cost beyond the cost of educating your plain vanilla kid. But it sounds like if your child is born with a disability making in-person schooling impossible or highly risky to their health, the system says “sorry, here’s 4 hours per week of isolated instruction” even though we now have evidence of a virtual model that works much better.

Is there public data on the cost and effectiveness of wrap-around services? Depending on their needs, the MVA has a much higher likelihood of benefiting those children. They should probably consider cutting funding to wrap-around services in favor of keeping the MVA.

You know, if you are going to advocate BOE to restore funding for MVA, you should probably come up with some items to cut instead, so why don’t you propose this and see what they say? Never know.

So far, I've heard two options for cutting expenses.

1) Cut funding for schools with low test scores
2) Cut wrap-around services

Guess what those two ideas have in common?

Totally fits if they’re using MVA to escape low performing schools….

I looked through MCPS's report on MVA and did not see anything about why MVA students were placed at MVA. It would be interesting to see a breakdown. I suspect that few people are using it truly to escape low-performing schools. Just doesn't make sense to me. For kids who have been in it since the pandemic, does it still make sense for them to be in MVA. Is there any evaluation done to see if MVA is still the best placement after a year or two. The FARMS rate is high. 43.1% for an environment where presumably kids need parent support and help at home. As a social worker that works with low income families, this is a big red flag for me that something doesn't quite make sense.

Has anyone interacted directly with these families receiving wrap-around services? I’m willing to bet that they would support defunding wrap-around services. As one of the supposed “recipients”, the MVA is the BEST thing that ever happened to my child!

What’s could be so wrong with “escaping low-performing schools”? At those
schools, kids can get introduced to teachers who openly say things like, “I have never liked Math”, “you’ll never need Math anyway” or students who say that “school
is boring”. I can’t imagine a school being high-performing in an environment like that. Parents would have to expend concerted efforts unraveling those ideas from their child’s mind.

The MVA is very effective at eliminating those experiences because most teachers know that it would be nuts to say that on camera and kids who do say things like that can be efficiently muted!

Most MVA parents are full-time homeschooling parents anyway so apart from buying curriculum materials, I’m not even sure why it costs much of anything to implement. They should probably just come together and start their own private school.

#DefundWrapAroundServices #REfundtheMVA

Pandemic style “pods” seems like a good solution. Then there isn’t so much pressure on each parent to implement a full homeschool curriculum.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If you are dead set that your kid needs virtual education and you refuse to consider other options, perhaps move to Florida. Apparently they have a Va run by the state that fits what you are looking for

+1. It’s very strange to me that it’s all or nothing for the MVA advocates. Maybe it speaks to the fact that it was a very niche, small program with essentially private tutoring, and the other available programs won’t have that. If simply having a virtual education was their #1 priority, they’d be making arrangements for their child to attend another program.

+2 The alternative to MVA isn't IIS, it's an appropriate in-person placement. Depending on the child, that might take a lot of different forms.

If a child was in MVA because their family wanted to be able to travel freely to Disneyland on the off-season, that child can return to a regular classroom.

If a child was in MVA due to bullying, the answer might be a COSA, but it's also worth considering that a child who entered MVA in 1st grade would be entering 6th next year. That's a whole new peer group and dynamic.

If a child was in MVA due to anxiety/rigidity, there are accommodations, interventions, and in-school placements that can help move the needle on those issues.

You have no idea what you are talking about. If those options were viable, MVA families would have gladly used them. Having your child attend virtual school requires more work for the parent. It involves supervision and controlling gadgets/technologies, arranging social activities to ensure your child is not isolated. It is definitely much easier to just send them in person. Why do you think MVA families advocated so much for the school? They really do not have any other options other than private online programs, which not everyone can afford.

How is in-person school not viable for the mom quoted in recent press articles as needing MVA for her daughters because they would otherwise be too distracted by fashion if they went in-person?

Maybe, for that one family, an in-person option would work. But what about the girl with medically resistant epilepsy who had a seizure in the school building and fell down the stairs, injuring herself? Or the suicidal teen who wanted to drop out of high school but is now considering attending college? I can provide you with many examples and quotes. These are real families with kids who were in MVA for various reasons, but they all absolutely thrived. If you are an MVA teacher reading this, thank you for your amazing work. What happened is so terribly sad, but you have truly touched those kids' hearts and changed their lives.

So where do we draw the line? Serving 800 students is too expensive when the cohort includes the kids who are using MVA because it’s a nice option for them. Do we add some sort of medical criteria to make sure the kids who truly need it get it and we don’t spend money on a virtual program for kids who should be back in-person?

Making it smaller would make it even more expensive on a per pupil basis. And give it fewer stakeholders.

Maybe it would be more expensive, maybe not if you take out the costs associated with all the kids who didnt really need it and would return to school.

We spend more money on a per pupil basis on certain populations all the time anyway. Poor kids get wrap around services at community schools, for example. Recent immigrants get English language learning services. Special needs children get specialized instruction from separate staff. Delayed talkers and readers get speech therapy and literacy intervention. High achievers get separate magnet programs. None of that is free and all of it adds to the per pupil cost beyond the cost of educating your plain vanilla kid. But it sounds like if your child is born with a disability making in-person schooling impossible or highly risky to their health, the system says “sorry, here’s 4 hours per week of isolated instruction” even though we now have evidence of a virtual model that works much better.

Is there public data on the cost and effectiveness of wrap-around services? Depending on their needs, the MVA has a much higher likelihood of benefiting those children. They should probably consider cutting funding to wrap-around services in favor of keeping the MVA.

You know, if you are going to advocate BOE to restore funding for MVA, you should probably come up with some items to cut instead, so why don’t you propose this and see what they say? Never know.

So far, I've heard two options for cutting expenses.

1) Cut funding for schools with low test scores
2) Cut wrap-around services

Guess what those two ideas have in common?

Totally fits if they’re using MVA to escape low performing schools….

I looked through MCPS's report on MVA and did not see anything about why MVA students were placed at MVA. It would be interesting to see a breakdown. I suspect that few people are using it truly to escape low-performing schools. Just doesn't make sense to me. For kids who have been in it since the pandemic, does it still make sense for them to be in MVA. Is there any evaluation done to see if MVA is still the best placement after a year or two. The FARMS rate is high. 43.1% for an environment where presumably kids need parent support and help at home. As a social worker that works with low income families, this is a big red flag for me that something doesn't quite make sense.

This. The farms rate being high for the virtual academy is a red flag

What red flag? Parents who stay home with their children are likely to earn less income but I am sure that they believe that it is worth the sacrifice to avoid overcrowded, underperforming in-person schools that can’t meet their children’s educational needs. For some families, the MVA is their only chance at escaping generational poverty. I can’t imagine why that’s a red flag to a social worker.

Some of you must be trolls. You can’t really think this is a sufficient justification for continuing the MVA.

[Anonymous]

Why can’t the MVA kids switch to homeschooling?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How has keeping your kids locked at home been normalized by a small, but vocal, part of society? That would have been considered outrageous child abuse when I grew up.

Why are you so invested in what others do? Focus on your own kids. Kids are not locked at home.

Isn't it awful when people care about the wellbeing of kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t the MVA kids switch to homeschooling?

Do the MVA posters here seem like they have a good enough grasp on reality to teach elementary topics?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How has keeping your kids locked at home been normalized by a small, but vocal, part of society? That would have been considered outrageous child abuse when I grew up.

Why are you so invested in what others do? Focus on your own kids. Kids are not locked at home.

Isn't it awful when people care about the wellbeing of kids?

You don't care about the wellbeing of children. You just care about getting pleasure out of being a nasty bully hurting kids.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you are dead set that your kid needs virtual education and you refuse to consider other options, perhaps move to Florida. Apparently they have a Va run by the state that fits what you are looking for

+1. It’s very strange to me that it’s all or nothing for the MVA advocates. Maybe it speaks to the fact that it was a very niche, small program with essentially private tutoring, and the other available programs won’t have that. If simply having a virtual education was their #1 priority, they’d be making arrangements for their child to attend another program.

+2 The alternative to MVA isn't IIS, it's an appropriate in-person placement. Depending on the child, that might take a lot of different forms.

If a child was in MVA because their family wanted to be able to travel freely to Disneyland on the off-season, that child can return to a regular classroom.

If a child was in MVA due to bullying, the answer might be a COSA, but it's also worth considering that a child who entered MVA in 1st grade would be entering 6th next year. That's a whole new peer group and dynamic.

If a child was in MVA due to anxiety/rigidity, there are accommodations, interventions, and in-school placements that can help move the needle on those issues.

You have no idea what you are talking about. If those options were viable, MVA families would have gladly used them. Having your child attend virtual school requires more work for the parent. It involves supervision and controlling gadgets/technologies, arranging social activities to ensure your child is not isolated. It is definitely much easier to just send them in person. Why do you think MVA families advocated so much for the school? They really do not have any other options other than private online programs, which not everyone can afford.

How is in-person school not viable for the mom quoted in recent press articles as needing MVA for her daughters because they would otherwise be too distracted by fashion if they went in-person?

Maybe, for that one family, an in-person option would work. But what about the girl with medically resistant epilepsy who had a seizure in the school building and fell down the stairs, injuring herself? Or the suicidal teen who wanted to drop out of high school but is now considering attending college? I can provide you with many examples and quotes. These are real families with kids who were in MVA for various reasons, but they all absolutely thrived. If you are an MVA teacher reading this, thank you for your amazing work. What happened is so terribly sad, but you have truly touched those kids' hearts and changed their lives.

So where do we draw the line? Serving 800 students is too expensive when the cohort includes the kids who are using MVA because it’s a nice option for them. Do we add some sort of medical criteria to make sure the kids who truly need it get it and we don’t spend money on a virtual program for kids who should be back in-person?

Making it smaller would make it even more expensive on a per pupil basis. And give it fewer stakeholders.

Maybe it would be more expensive, maybe not if you take out the costs associated with all the kids who didnt really need it and would return to school.

We spend more money on a per pupil basis on certain populations all the time anyway. Poor kids get wrap around services at community schools, for example. Recent immigrants get English language learning services. Special needs children get specialized instruction from separate staff. Delayed talkers and readers get speech therapy and literacy intervention. High achievers get separate magnet programs. None of that is free and all of it adds to the per pupil cost beyond the cost of educating your plain vanilla kid. But it sounds like if your child is born with a disability making in-person schooling impossible or highly risky to their health, the system says “sorry, here’s 4 hours per week of isolated instruction” even though we now have evidence of a virtual model that works much better.

So, that's not exactly right, at least according to MCPS. The MCPS argument is that the district served before COVID, and continues to serve, children with disabilities with a variety of in-person options. Not every wheelchair user is in MVA, for example. So, yes, they might be adding another kid to a classroom that focuses on children with social emotional disabilities, but at least they won't be standing up an entire administrative structure around it.

That’s not what I was talking about when I used the words “impossible” in the words of mine that you bolded. MCPS’ claim that it served and continues to serve kids with disabilities with a variety of in-person options is nice, but doesn’t mean much to the kid whose parents testified the other day about their kid who can’t go to in-person school, who previously received 4 hours of isolated instruction per week, who thrived under MVA but will now lose that because it was too costly to use MVA for all the other kids who were there but didn’t actually need it.

MVA costs far less per student than in person.

Disingenuous. The question isn't whether MCPS will have in-person school or virtual. It is whether MCPS will have virtual school *in addition to* in-person school.

Running a separate program is more expensive for the district as a whole than sending kids to their home schools or SPED placements.

No it's not more expensive and it helps with overcrowding.

Removing a few kids from an elementary school does not help with overcrowding. Enrollment in MVA was sufficiently small that kids can return to their home schools without needing to add teachers or noticeably adding to the overcrowding.

It would have had they only let in the waitlist families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone interested in joining a lawsuit to force MCPS to bring back universal masking, contact tracing, and quarantine periods? Kids should not have to course between their health and their education!

Oh yeah please do this so we can torture the children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you are dead set that your kid needs virtual education and you refuse to consider other options, perhaps move to Florida. Apparently they have a Va run by the state that fits what you are looking for

+1. It’s very strange to me that it’s all or nothing for the MVA advocates. Maybe it speaks to the fact that it was a very niche, small program with essentially private tutoring, and the other available programs won’t have that. If simply having a virtual education was their #1 priority, they’d be making arrangements for their child to attend another program.

+2 The alternative to MVA isn't IIS, it's an appropriate in-person placement. Depending on the child, that might take a lot of different forms.

If a child was in MVA because their family wanted to be able to travel freely to Disneyland on the off-season, that child can return to a regular classroom.

If a child was in MVA due to bullying, the answer might be a COSA, but it's also worth considering that a child who entered MVA in 1st grade would be entering 6th next year. That's a whole new peer group and dynamic.

If a child was in MVA due to anxiety/rigidity, there are accommodations, interventions, and in-school placements that can help move the needle on those issues.

You have no idea what you are talking about. If those options were viable, MVA families would have gladly used them. Having your child attend virtual school requires more work for the parent. It involves supervision and controlling gadgets/technologies, arranging social activities to ensure your child is not isolated. It is definitely much easier to just send them in person. Why do you think MVA families advocated so much for the school? They really do not have any other options other than private online programs, which not everyone can afford.

How is in-person school not viable for the mom quoted in recent press articles as needing MVA for her daughters because they would otherwise be too distracted by fashion if they went in-person?

Maybe, for that one family, an in-person option would work. But what about the girl with medically resistant epilepsy who had a seizure in the school building and fell down the stairs, injuring herself? Or the suicidal teen who wanted to drop out of high school but is now considering attending college? I can provide you with many examples and quotes. These are real families with kids who were in MVA for various reasons, but they all absolutely thrived. If you are an MVA teacher reading this, thank you for your amazing work. What happened is so terribly sad, but you have truly touched those kids' hearts and changed their lives.

So where do we draw the line? Serving 800 students is too expensive when the cohort includes the kids who are using MVA because it’s a nice option for them. Do we add some sort of medical criteria to make sure the kids who truly need it get it and we don’t spend money on a virtual program for kids who should be back in-person?

Making it smaller would make it even more expensive on a per pupil basis. And give it fewer stakeholders.

Maybe it would be more expensive, maybe not if you take out the costs associated with all the kids who didnt really need it and would return to school.

We spend more money on a per pupil basis on certain populations all the time anyway. Poor kids get wrap around services at community schools, for example. Recent immigrants get English language learning services. Special needs children get specialized instruction from separate staff. Delayed talkers and readers get speech therapy and literacy intervention. High achievers get separate magnet programs. None of that is free and all of it adds to the per pupil cost beyond the cost of educating your plain vanilla kid. But it sounds like if your child is born with a disability making in-person schooling impossible or highly risky to their health, the system says “sorry, here’s 4 hours per week of isolated instruction” even though we now have evidence of a virtual model that works much better.

So, that's not exactly right, at least according to MCPS. The MCPS argument is that the district served before COVID, and continues to serve, children with disabilities with a variety of in-person options. Not every wheelchair user is in MVA, for example. So, yes, they might be adding another kid to a classroom that focuses on children with social emotional disabilities, but at least they won't be standing up an entire administrative structure around it.

That’s not what I was talking about when I used the words “impossible” in the words of mine that you bolded. MCPS’ claim that it served and continues to serve kids with disabilities with a variety of in-person options is nice, but doesn’t mean much to the kid whose parents testified the other day about their kid who can’t go to in-person school, who previously received 4 hours of isolated instruction per week, who thrived under MVA but will now lose that because it was too costly to use MVA for all the other kids who were there but didn’t actually need it.

MVA costs far less per student than in person.

Disingenuous. The question isn't whether MCPS will have in-person school or virtual. It is whether MCPS will have virtual school *in addition to* in-person school.

Running a separate program is more expensive for the district as a whole than sending kids to their home schools or SPED placements.

No it's not more expensive and it helps with overcrowding.

Removing a few kids from an elementary school does not help with overcrowding. Enrollment in MVA was sufficiently small that kids can return to their home schools without needing to add teachers or noticeably adding to the overcrowding.

It would have had they only let in the waitlist families.

Sure... the alleged waitlist to get into those virtual classes that only had 12 kids per teacher...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone interested in joining a lawsuit to force MCPS to bring back universal masking, contact tracing, and quarantine periods? Kids should not have to course between their health and their education!

Oh yeah please do this so we can torture the children.

With health.
We do not want to raise healthy children.
Make vaccines illegal and let’s roll back the clock to a time when kids died before they were 12.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t the MVA kids switch to homeschooling?

Do the MVA posters here seem like they have a good enough grasp on reality to teach elementary topics?

You mean compared to Joel Beidleman? Yes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t the MVA kids switch to homeschooling?

Do the MVA posters here seem like they have a good enough grasp on reality to teach elementary topics?

You mean compared to Joel Beidleman? Yes

Try being a teacher, not a principal.

But if you think you have a solid, elementary-level education, then great! That solves the problem. Homeschool your kids so you can continue to hold them in isolation until they inevitably run away from home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone interested in joining a lawsuit to force MCPS to bring back universal masking, contact tracing, and quarantine periods? Kids should not have to course between their health and their education!

Oh yeah please do this so we can torture the children.

With health.
We do not want to raise healthy children.
Make vaccines illegal and let’s roll back the clock to a time when kids died before they were 12.

Vaccines don't stop transmission! They're not enough. We need masks, contact tracing, and to bring back 10-day quarantine periods to prevent kids from getting long covid.

[Anonymous]

Other districts use virtual instruction to keep kids who are dangerous to others out of the school buildings. Do we? If so, will they all be sent back into school?

I know there are kids now in schools who require security escorts at all times because they pose an immediate danger to others. Will we have enough staff to accommodate any increase in those kinds of students?