Reply to Is Howard moving in the same direction as MCPS

Forum Index » MD Public Schools other than MCPS

Reply to "Is Howard moving in the same direction as MCPS"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I live in Howard County and don't disagree with any of the above, but at the same time I havent seen anyone on the school board, Council, or Calvin Ball really pile on him at all for those issues.

I get the feeling he could have coasted out the last two years of his contract if he wanted to.   There didnt seem like there was nearly enough heat on him as there should have been. [/quote]

I have not actually attended the BoE meetings, but some of my friends who are teachers say that the teacher's union has been complaining to the BoE about Martirano's (lack of) plans and his poor response to the various problems.  The fact that he spent the two weeks before school started assuring everyone that everything was planned and under control and the first week of school distinctly proved that the plans were poorly thought out, none had been tested, and there were no "plans B or C" showed that he really didn't do a very good job.  Then his director of transportation resigned and he still did not have good solutions for many of the problems.

Case in point, my children go to a middle school that is on the same campus and uses the same driveways and loading/unloading zones as the local elementary school.  In the old system, the schools started 30 minutes apart.  One set of buses went around and picked up the middle school kids and brought them to to school, then they went and did another circuit of the same route and picked up the ES kids.  Everyone got to school on time, one set of buses dedicated to the two schools and things worked.  There were even times that some middle school kids missed the bus and were able to wait and catch the ES bus (same drivers, so they knew the kids) and get to school, walk to the other school and sign in late.  They would get in during first period.

This year, Martirano and his grand new school time plans, made both schools start at the same time.  So, instead of 600 kids arriving, then another 600 kids arriving 30 minutes later, you had 1200 kids arriving at the same time for both schools.  The driveway was jammed with so many parents dropping off that the buses were stuck 4-5 blocks away and could not get through.  The school system did not allocate enough buses, so some buses were dropping off kids late, then having to go and loop around and pick up a second load.  The first week of schools, some kids were over 60 minutes late for school due to the bus issues.  When they finally "fixed" the issue, they separated the school start times by 15 minutes, so now the ES starts 15 min after the MS.  But we still have problems.  The ES will not allow parents to drop off kids more than 15 min early.  But many parents get to school 20-25 min early, so 5-10 min before the MS starts.  But the ES parents are already queued up and blocking the driveway.  So, I can get there 10 min before MS starts, but may take 10 minutes of waiting for the ES parents who are blocking to driveway, but are not allowed to drop off their kids.  I have had times that my kids have had to break the rules and get out of the car in the middle of the driveway with buses going by, just so that they can make it to the doors before school start.  This is just one of the Martirano special treats that make this school year so broken.  There are many others.  And the teachers and parents are fed up with him sending out messages that everything is good and rosy, when they aren't.  He wasn't doing himself any favors by only talking about the things he fixed and not talking about the problems he hasn't yet fixed.  And he still never came up with a good explanation why we are spending much more money for the California based busing company, not getting the things they planned and not holding them financially responsible for the costs that they've added to the county due to their breach of contracts.

Right now, whoever is going to step in when Martinaro retires is going to inherit a broken system that they'll have to spend their entire interim period trying to get back to what we used to have before this contract.  Hopefully the breach of contract will be enough that they can cancel this contract for next school year and perhaps find a way to reinstate the previous MD bus contractors and subcontractors, so that we'll be back to what we used to have.  It wasn't great, but it was much better than the new contract and it cost way less.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics