MCPS Brian Hill Dissembles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

That’s totally not true. Imagine 4/10 were selected for instruction instead of 4/22. That’s clear bias, as we already have 2 Jewish holidays as non-instruction or closed days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

That’s totally not true. Imagine 4/10 were selected for instruction instead of 4/22. That’s clear bias, as we already have 2 Jewish holidays as non-instruction or closed days.

No, it's not. There's school on a variety of holy/sacred days for different religions and cultures. There is no possible way to avoid them all. You see the same thing with work days.

Now if the district refused to give excused absence on those days then they very likely would run into a problem. But they're not doing that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

Sure, there may be too many holidays to avoid them all, but it doesn’t remotely follow that any calendar selected would therefore be non-discriminatory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were capable of that level of excellence they would have private sector jobs.

as opposed to ones with a great pension and summers off

Sadly, it is far from a great pension for any school employees. And Central Office doesn’t get the summers off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were capable of that level of excellence they would have private sector jobs.

as opposed to ones with a great pension and summers off

Sadly, it is far from a great pension for any school employees. And Central Office doesn’t get the summers off.

Our pension is better than nothing as in some other professions.

Central office, school administrators work 12 months but many teachers also work during the summer in MCPS or elsewhere to make ends meet. A 10 month employee can choose to stretch his/her salary to receive checks 12 months or get paid durung the 10 momths they work and figure out something else for July and August. I don't think the general public knows that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

That’s totally not true. Imagine 4/10 were selected for instruction instead of 4/22. That’s clear bias, as we already have 2 Jewish holidays as non-instruction or closed days.

No, it's not. There's school on a variety of holy/sacred days for different religions and cultures. There is no possible way to avoid them all. You see the same thing with work days.

Now if the district refused to give excused absence on those days then they very likely would run into a problem. But they're not doing that.

+1 by this logic we should offer instruction in everyone's native language. But we don't because that would be logistically impossible, and federal guidelines support this approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If parents only knew what a cluster today was for school admin trying to prep for a potential virtual day tomorrow. The lack of communication from central, rumors, various offices sending out conflicting information. etc. His email at the end of the day was a nice slap in the face. Just bold face lies.

I think we can imagine but I’m really sorry you ran around like that and then got gaslit.

To be fair, it was predictable. Anyone familiar with elementary schools knew they couldn't do virtual. And the central office was never going to fess up to their incompetence.

What needs to be done besides taking home your Chromebook from the cart and a charger? Some younger kids may need password help. Are they set up with the right program for the online learning (zoom? Canvas? Other?)? Seems like the start of the next quarter would be a good time to make sure everyone is set up for this.

Or make sure there are make-up days in the calendar.

Oh great! We already did that one!

You're obsessed with make-up days. Posting in every thread you can...there are other options and they should be used.

Right. Per the district's plans, there are 8 options built into the 2023-2024 calendar. Some are better than others. January 29th seems like the best one, but we'll see if the district can get its act together. Plus we'll probably need to use April 10th as well. These probably won't be the only snow days this year.

January 29 is not the best time for teachers. We need this day to grade, especially since we've lost so much time this week. If we had missed days in September due to a hurricane and found out two months ago we'd be losing January 29, fine. But it would be so messed up to take it away now, especially since so much is due right now - special education paperwork, SLOs, grades, prepping for MP3/Semester 2. The list goes on and on. Teachers need time to do all of these things and only giving a week's notice for a make up day is absurd.

Serious question for teachers. Would you prefer to have Jan 29 for grading and planning and have to come back for one day the week of June 17th to wrap up? Or the swap of that?

I would rather come back on 6/17.

Admin at my school won’t allow us to enforce deadlines. As a result, there’s a deluge of very late work on the last day of the marking period. We’ve even had students email us work the day grades had to be posted.

It’s barely doable with the entire day available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were capable of that level of excellence they would have private sector jobs.

as opposed to ones with a great pension and summers off

Sadly, it is far from a great pension for any school employees. And Central Office doesn’t get the summers off.

Our pension is better than nothing as in some other professions.

Central office, school administrators work 12 months but many teachers also work during the summer in MCPS or elsewhere to make ends meet. A 10 month employee can choose to stretch his/her salary to receive checks 12 months or get paid durung the 10 momths they work and figure out something else for July and August. I don't think the general public knows that.

Better than nothing doesn’t make it great as the PP claimed. If you were told you were staying in a 4 star hotel in central Paris and when you arrived, it was a 2 star in the suburbs, would you say it was great in your review?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were capable of that level of excellence they would have private sector jobs.

as opposed to ones with a great pension and summers off

Sadly, it is far from a great pension for any school employees. And Central Office doesn’t get the summers off.

Our pension is better than nothing as in some other professions.

Central office, school administrators work 12 months but many teachers also work during the summer in MCPS or elsewhere to make ends meet. A 10 month employee can choose to stretch his/her salary to receive checks 12 months or get paid durung the 10 momths they work and figure out something else for July and August. I don't think the general public knows that.

Better than nothing doesn’t make it great as the PP claimed. If you were told you were staying in a 4 star hotel in central Paris and when you arrived, it was a 2 star in the suburbs, would you say it was great in your review?

DP. Don't get me wrong-- I'm no fan of pensions. They end up being golden handcuffs. But the retirement benefits are quite good if you stick with teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

That’s totally not true. Imagine 4/10 were selected for instruction instead of 4/22. That’s clear bias, as we already have 2 Jewish holidays as non-instruction or closed days.

No, it's not. There's school on a variety of holy/sacred days for different religions and cultures. There is no possible way to avoid them all. You see the same thing with work days.

Now if the district refused to give excused absence on those days then they very likely would run into a problem. But they're not doing that.

+1 by this logic we should offer instruction in everyone's native language. But we don't because that would be logistically impossible, and federal guidelines support this approach.

By your logic, you can just choose one religion and go with it. You are wrong! Whether something discriminatory is illegal is a separate and more complicated question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

That’s totally not true. Imagine 4/10 were selected for instruction instead of 4/22. That’s clear bias, as we already have 2 Jewish holidays as non-instruction or closed days.

No, it's not. There's school on a variety of holy/sacred days for different religions and cultures. There is no possible way to avoid them all. You see the same thing with work days.

Now if the district refused to give excused absence on those days then they very likely would run into a problem. But they're not doing that.

+1 by this logic we should offer instruction in everyone's native language. But we don't because that would be logistically impossible, and federal guidelines support this approach.

By your logic, you can just choose one religion and go with it. You are wrong! Whether something discriminatory is illegal is a separate and more complicated question.

Give it a rest. From your other posts, it is clear you're not actually concerned about kids being able to celebrate Eid. You just have a huge chip on your shoulder about virtual. The ship sailed on that one. Everyone else accepts you can't make virtual snow days useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was so unhappy with MCPS that I moved my 3rd and 4th kids to private for high school, but, I also think kids have not missed that much school due to weather since we started back up after COVID.

It has just been a couple of days. MCPS is too large to pivot to virtual learning on a days notice. My kid's private doesn't go virtual due to weather (even though they are well-setup to do it. Do we all remember when our kids missed weeks of learning in MCPS in March/April/May of 2020? That was a s***show. This is just a couple of days. Kids will be fine.

Finally, a SANE voice of reason. All these parents screaming that the sky is falling are absolutely unhinged.

You're hearing from just a few people that are either very strongly personally invested in virtual (probably parents whose kids are already in VA), as well as a few parents/teachers that are worried their spring break/summer plans are going to be affected because they chose to make inflexible plans on scheduled make-up days.

It's weird. There are days identified in the calendar for snow days. We're in exactly the situation they were intended for. There shouldn't be great controversy over what to do.

Just because the calendar was decided upon earlier doesn’t mean it isn’t biased or problematic. It also doesn’t specify the order in which makeup days are used, which is what we are discussing now. I don’t get how you can’t see that

No court would question a public school calendar developed through a district's standard public process. There's no risk of a discrimination lawsuit.

Because a standard public process couldn’t be discriminatory? I’m not necessarily saying I think the MCPS calendar is discriminatory, but your statement is ridiculous because such a process could have discriminatory intent or effect and certainly could be subject to litigation risk.

Not when it comes to picking a school calendar. The reality is, there are too many holidays to avoid them all.

That’s totally not true. Imagine 4/10 were selected for instruction instead of 4/22. That’s clear bias, as we already have 2 Jewish holidays as non-instruction or closed days.

No, it's not. There's school on a variety of holy/sacred days for different religions and cultures. There is no possible way to avoid them all. You see the same thing with work days.

Now if the district refused to give excused absence on those days then they very likely would run into a problem. But they're not doing that.

+1 by this logic we should offer instruction in everyone's native language. But we don't because that would be logistically impossible, and federal guidelines support this approach.

By your logic, you can just choose one religion and go with it. You are wrong! Whether something discriminatory is illegal is a separate and more complicated question.

Have you looked at federal holidays before?

[Anonymous]

Maryland requires these holidays:
(i) Thanksgiving Day and the day after;
(ii) Christmas Eve and from then through January 1;
(iii) Martin Luther King, Jr. Day;
(iv) Presidents' Day;
(v) The Friday before Easter and from then through the Monday after Easter;
(vi) Memorial Day; and
(vii) Primary and general election days.

Otherwise, MCPS looks at where holidays line up with quarters to see if a contractually required professional day can fall on one, and at historical patterns of excessive staff and student absences.