Reply to B-CC Student Newspaper Blows the Lid Off of Drug Use and Distribution in MCPS High Schools

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Reply to "B-CC Student Newspaper Blows the Lid Off of Drug Use and Distribution in MCPS High Schools"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Where are the parents?  Clearly they are ok with their kids using. [/quote]

Where is MCPS leadership? Clearly they're asleep at the wheel.[/quote]

What can leadership do without parent support.  It goes both ways.  [/quote]

I don't think B-CC lacks for parental support. They have an active PTSA and they lobbied for the security meeting at MCPS where they leadership [b]dodged questions and paid lip service[/b]. So there are plenty of concerned and engaged parents. Now that's not true at all high schools, but[b] if MCPS is playing dumb, blind and silent with a high school full of very present and engaged parents, [b]you can only imagine what's going on elsewhere[/b] where fewer parents are engaged[/b].[/quote]

This, 100%! So true about that meeting. And: So many high schools in MCPS have minimal parent engagement...mainly because they don't have active PTSAs that have events and communications to engage with the school. [b]I can't imagine that Kennedy would have held a parent town hall after the recent student death (please let me know if I'm wrong)[/b], because I know people w/kids at the school and know how the parental engagement in school matters is low. (this isn't to say parents are disengaged with their kids' lives more generally). And the B-CC parents specifically lobbied for MCPS to address its shortcomings system-wide (e.g., communications policy, training/drill) so that all students across the county can benefit from higher MCPS standards.

Side note: please do not just make random assumptions, or add an opinion on this thread unless you are familiar with the issues in the articles, and how they've been handled. For example, the parents advocating for changes on the part of the MCPS are not the parents of the kids who are grappling with addiction or drug use. There are different issues: (1) the drug use exists and (2) how the admin/MCPS deals with situations where that drug use affects operations during the school day, for instance (esp. if it negatively impacts 100s of students). And the changes requested related to (2), like communications and transparency, and responsiveness to concerns on bathroom safety. I'd say parents are equally concerned that drug/alcohol issues are prevalent and know it's a wider problem that takes a complex effort to address and aren't demanding that MCPS instantly solve that.[/quote]

Kennedy parent here. You bring up a lot of great points, but we did actually insist on and have a townhall after a school shooting threat. And the death was thoroughly discussed in the January PTSA meeting.[/quote]

I'm so glad to hear that I was wrong and I hope the townhall and meeting were helpful.  Sending supportive thoughts to your school community after the recent student death. I'm not sure whether you had any 'asks' after the shooting, but we did at B-CC. Specifically, one of them was to revise how it communicates with parents in real-time, another was to address inadequate preparation of subs; but many 'asks' at that meeting were spread out between asks of B-CC admin and asks of various MCPS officials, and it's not clear what follow-up we'd see as a result. I worry that at schools like Kennedy with lower parent engagement on school matters, parents could be more deferential to MCPS/Principal so less likely to demand necessary changes. We just want to learn from this, and avoid future tragedy, right?[/quote]

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