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

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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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Say you have an anxiety disorder without saying.

Looks like State Senator Nancy King, Majority Leader, has an anxiety disorder. Give her a call and let her know your diagnosis.

[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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

Because I’m not asking for $5 million to continue a covid-era program that’s lost more than two thirds of its participants, fails to educate kids even worse than in/person schools, and has unacceptably high chronic absenteeism rates so that parents can avoid sending kids to in-person schools to avoid the distraction of the fashion choices of their peers.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

Because I’m not asking for $5 million to continue a covid-era program that’s lost more than two thirds of its participants, fails to educate kids even worse than in/person schools, and has unacceptably high chronic absenteeism rates so that parents can avoid sending kids to in-person schools to avoid the distraction of the fashion choices of their peers.

Still in the covid-era as you call it.
If you want to talk data, then release the data. How come MCPS gets to keep MVA data from the public? If it's so horrible, then put out the current data so we can all see. What are you so scared of?

On future messages, note that $5M is absolutely nothing to MCPS. They spend that much money on credit cards in a few months and don't even check receipts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

Believe it or not, if you can prove your kid is being bullied, you can get a COSA to transfer to a different school.

[Anonymous]

The few families I know in the virtual school signed up for it to avoid their kids from attending a middle school that resulted from a boundary study. Their reasoning was simply they didn't want their kids to go there. One even told me it was a nice option since they could take their kids on multiple vacations throughout the school year without missing school. I know this isn't everyone's reason but for these families, it was to avoid a low performing school on paper that they were worried about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The few families I know in the virtual school signed up for it to avoid their kids from attending a middle school that resulted from a boundary study. Their reasoning was simply they didn't want their kids to go there. One even told me it was a nice option since they could take their kids on multiple vacations throughout the school year without missing school. I know this isn't everyone's reason but for these families, it was to avoid a low performing school on paper that they were worried about.

You are really going to hate the charter school familes next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The few families I know in the virtual school signed up for it to avoid their kids from attending a middle school that resulted from a boundary study. Their reasoning was simply they didn't want their kids to go there. One even told me it was a nice option since they could take their kids on multiple vacations throughout the school year without missing school. I know this isn't everyone's reason but for these families, it was to avoid a low performing school on paper that they were worried about.

You are really going to hate the charter school familes next year.

No hate, the pp is jealous. They want to be able to go on vacations anytime and help their kids cheat on tests, but they didn't like their kids enough to keep them at home in MVA.

[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:

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: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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

A fact of life in public school is that other people get to decide what is best for your kids. It's not a bespoke program exactly like you want. That's homeschooling.

You have the same choice as anyone else. Send your kids to school or homeschool them.

[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:

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: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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

Because I’m not asking for $5 million to continue a covid-era program that’s lost more than two thirds of its participants, fails to educate kids even worse than in/person schools, and has unacceptably high chronic absenteeism rates so that parents can avoid sending kids to in-person schools to avoid the distraction of the fashion choices of their peers.

Still in the covid-era as you call it.
If you want to talk data, then release the data. How come MCPS gets to keep MVA data from the public? If it's so horrible, then put out the current data so we can all see. What are you so scared of?

On future messages, note that $5M is absolutely nothing to MCPS. They spend that much money on credit cards in a few months and don't even check receipts.

With the program having been officially cut from the budget, you do realize that the burden is on you to prove why that decision should be reversed, right? Screaming into the void about “recent data” to feed your conspiracy theories about the fact that the program somehow had a miraculous one-year turnaround in its assessment results that MCPS is now conspiring to withhold from you is not going to cut it.

Send some public information requests to get the data. Go to the press so the only people out there talking about why the MVA must stay aren’t the people who want to keep their kids away from middle school fashion distractions. Lobby the county council to step up for the kids with medical needs who really need something like the MVA as opposed to going back to IIS. Work to change the narrative that’s formed that the MVA largely serves entitled parents who are making a choice not to send their kids to in-person schools for a variety of reasons, none of which are because of a real need but instead is a preference to avoid the horrors of MCPS schools. Stop making up random arguments about how MCPS spends $5 million in other parts of the budget that’s now been approved for next year. Do better.

[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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

A fact of life in public school is that other people get to decide what is best for your kids. It's not a bespoke program exactly like you want. That's homeschooling.

You have the same choice as anyone else. Send your kids to school or homeschool them.

Stop boasting like you actually get any say in the matter. It’s quite hilarious to see all these people who obviously lead a fairly privileged life to comment like they have some air of authority.

You aren’t in charge. Stop acting like it. If you really really feel 0.1% the MVA takes up out of the entire budget is worth this much energy you are expending, it might be beneficial for you to take a step back and just let it go.

Assuming you know anything about families in the MVA makes you appear foolish. One or two anecdotes does not make one an expert in the MVA.

I wonder if those on against the MVA are leftovers from the reopening group (or a few who may need to check in with their doctor). It’s getting old and tired. No one finds your comments add value because you just repeat the same thing over and over again.

It’s a similar mindset of people who advocated for their kids to opt out of lgtbq literature. It demonstrates a lack of empathy, critical thinking, and ability to accept change.

I wonder if you would act like this outside of the anonymity of this forum. It’s odd acting like you have some sort of superiority complex about why you know best about children who are not your responsibility.

Go find something to help support the schools YOUR children go to. Children model what they see - many of you are helping explain why we have so much entitlement in our schools.

[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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

Because I’m not asking for $5 million to continue a covid-era program that’s lost more than two thirds of its participants, fails to educate kids even worse than in/person schools, and has unacceptably high chronic absenteeism rates so that parents can avoid sending kids to in-person schools to avoid the distraction of the fashion choices of their peers.

Still in the covid-era as you call it.
If you want to talk data, then release the data. How come MCPS gets to keep MVA data from the public? If it's so horrible, then put out the current data so we can all see. What are you so scared of?

On future messages, note that $5M is absolutely nothing to MCPS. They spend that much money on credit cards in a few months and don't even check receipts.

With the program having been officially cut from the budget, you do realize that the burden is on you to prove why that decision should be reversed, right? Screaming into the void about “recent data” to feed your conspiracy theories about the fact that the program somehow had a miraculous one-year turnaround in its assessment results that MCPS is now conspiring to withhold from you is not going to cut it.

Send some public information requests to get the data. Go to the press so the only people out there talking about why the MVA must stay aren’t the people who want to keep their kids away from middle school fashion distractions. Lobby the county council to step up for the kids with medical needs who really need something like the MVA as opposed to going back to IIS. Work to change the narrative that’s formed that the MVA largely serves entitled parents who are making a choice not to send their kids to in-person schools for a variety of reasons, none of which are because of a real need but instead is a preference to avoid the horrors of MCPS schools. Stop making up random arguments about how MCPS spends $5 million in other parts of the budget that’s now been approved for next year. Do better.

News blackout in your home? MVA families have been doing all that. Pay attention before you criticize.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

Because I’m not asking for $5 million to continue a covid-era program that’s lost more than two thirds of its participants, fails to educate kids even worse than in/person schools, and has unacceptably high chronic absenteeism rates so that parents can avoid sending kids to in-person schools to avoid the distraction of the fashion choices of their peers.

Still in the covid-era as you call it.
If you want to talk data, then release the data. How come MCPS gets to keep MVA data from the public? If it's so horrible, then put out the current data so we can all see. What are you so scared of?

On future messages, note that $5M is absolutely nothing to MCPS. They spend that much money on credit cards in a few months and don't even check receipts.

With the program having been officially cut from the budget, you do realize that the burden is on you to prove why that decision should be reversed, right? Screaming into the void about “recent data” to feed your conspiracy theories about the fact that the program somehow had a miraculous one-year turnaround in its assessment results that MCPS is now conspiring to withhold from you is not going to cut it.

Send some public information requests to get the data. Go to the press so the only people out there talking about why the MVA must stay aren’t the people who want to keep their kids away from middle school fashion distractions. Lobby the county council to step up for the kids with medical needs who really need something like the MVA as opposed to going back to IIS. Work to change the narrative that’s formed that the MVA largely serves entitled parents who are making a choice not to send their kids to in-person schools for a variety of reasons, none of which are because of a real need but instead is a preference to avoid the horrors of MCPS schools. Stop making up random arguments about how MCPS spends $5 million in other parts of the budget that’s now been approved for next year. Do better.

News blackout in your home? MVA families have been doing all that. Pay attention before you criticize.

If those families talking to the press reflect the "best" examples of need, then no wonder MVA was closed. There's no reason those kids couldn't go to school.

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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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

A fact of life in public school is that other people get to decide what is best for your kids. It's not a bespoke program exactly like you want. That's homeschooling.

You have the same choice as anyone else. Send your kids to school or homeschool them.

Stop boasting like you actually get any say in the matter. It’s quite hilarious to see all these people who obviously lead a fairly privileged life to comment like they have some air of authority.

You aren’t in charge. Stop acting like it. If you really really feel 0.1% the MVA takes up out of the entire budget is worth this much energy you are expending, it might be beneficial for you to take a step back and just let it go.

Assuming you know anything about families in the MVA makes you appear foolish. One or two anecdotes does not make one an expert in the MVA.

I wonder if those on against the MVA are leftovers from the reopening group (or a few who may need to check in with their doctor). It’s getting old and tired. No one finds your comments add value because you just repeat the same thing over and over again.

It’s a similar mindset of people who advocated for their kids to opt out of lgtbq literature. It demonstrates a lack of empathy, critical thinking, and ability to accept change.

I wonder if you would act like this outside of the anonymity of this forum. It’s odd acting like you have some sort of superiority complex about why you know best about children who are not your responsibility.

Go find something to help support the schools YOUR children go to. Children model what they see - many of you are helping explain why we have so much entitlement in our schools.

You seem to keep ignoring the fact that resurrecting MVA would mean cutting teachers and resources from schools for all the other kids in the county.

[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.

That's quite the claim. What MCPS school is so bad that it guarantees its students will end up poverty for the rest of their lives? That sounds like a bigger problem than getting rid of MVA.

I think we're getting a window into the minds of some of the MVA folks here. It's not about disability - it's about fear of Black and brown students. They are so worked up into their idea of public schools as some gang-infested hellscape that they can't imagine their poor child navigating that minefield every day. Never mind that almost 200K kids go to MCPS schools every day and the vast majority of them never encounter anything scarier than a tussle in the hallway.

As a former MVA parent who is black, I am compelled to speak up here. Our local
school *is* a hellscape. My child got tussled and bullied for weeks and went from being so passionate about academics to the point of pursuing it during spare time to wanting to be accepted by those bullies and losing just about all interest in academic pursuits because those bullies found it “weird”. The principal informed us that bullying and fighting are quite normal there and that it’s an underperforming school so I should adjust my expectations.

We wanted to return to the MVA but are disappointed that we no longer can.
Now, you are essentially saying that these hellscape schools don’t exist.

ABC7 just interviewed the nominated superintendent Thomas Taylor and he said he would be meeting with the Montgomery Virtual Academy families because that is part of the process. He is agreeing to meet with these families after Felder refused.

Yea, families have really been pushing for this.

Gluttons for punishment? They want yet another person to tell them MVA is dead?

MVA families will not stop till the MVA is restored, just like you'd do if they shut down your child's school that was working for them.

That's called a temper tantrum. Your parents should have done more to teach you those aren't effective.

No, you can advocate for something long term without throwing a temper tantrum. Of course if that's the only lens you see the world in, everything looks that way to you. Strategic thinkers take the long view.

They made the decision to close it. You voiced your objections, but the policymakers in power decided to close it anyway. Continuing to whine about it is a temper tantrum.

identifying an alternative, sustainable path could be productive, but that isn't what the MVA supporters have been attempting to do.

Grow up. It’s a vital school for kids. Kids needs should come first. Try it.

If by "vital school" you mean "nice-to-have program", then yes, I agree

I'm sure for some kids it's a nice-to-have, but it sounds like there are a lot of kids there who have no other good alternative. (Outsider here, but some of the stories are really heart-rending.)

There's always an alternative. Some parents just don't like thise alternatives.

Wrong forum. MCPS does not always have alternatives. Dream on.

The main alternative is that they can go to in-person school. The vast majority of MVA can do this- their parents just don't want them to. There are a variety of reasons that their parents don't want them to, some which are better than others, but they could go.

Say you are clueless without saying.

Why do you feel you should get the choice but others should not? Why do you think you should decide what is best for others kids, but they don't get to decide what's best for your kids?

A fact of life in public school is that other people get to decide what is best for your kids. It's not a bespoke program exactly like you want. That's homeschooling.

You have the same choice as anyone else. Send your kids to school or homeschool them.

Stop boasting like you actually get any say in the matter. It’s quite hilarious to see all these people who obviously lead a fairly privileged life to comment like they have some air of authority.

You aren’t in charge. Stop acting like it. If you really really feel 0.1% the MVA takes up out of the entire budget is worth this much energy you are expending, it might be beneficial for you to take a step back and just let it go.

Assuming you know anything about families in the MVA makes you appear foolish. One or two anecdotes does not make one an expert in the MVA.

I wonder if those on against the MVA are leftovers from the reopening group (or a few who may need to check in with their doctor). It’s getting old and tired. No one finds your comments add value because you just repeat the same thing over and over again.

It’s a similar mindset of people who advocated for their kids to opt out of lgtbq literature. It demonstrates a lack of empathy, critical thinking, and ability to accept change.

I wonder if you would act like this outside of the anonymity of this forum. It’s odd acting like you have some sort of superiority complex about why you know best about children who are not your responsibility.

Go find something to help support the schools YOUR children go to. Children model what they see - many of you are helping explain why we have so much entitlement in our schools.

This is an unhinged response to my simply pointing out that decisions about what programs are offered by public schools are made collectively, through our elected representatives.