Reply to Elrich and Friedson confusingly blame each other for underfunding MCPS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have no sympathy for MCPS budget shortfalls.  My impression is that since Montgomery County is wealthy, liberal, and well-educated, prioritizing education, education, they are relatively well-funded.  Repeatedly, I have seen them spend excessively, even when there might have been reason to exercise a little spending restraint.

For example, during the 2008-09 school year, I attended a curriculum meeting where the district announced their intention to put Promethean smart boards in every classroom. While they listed a number of benefits they would provide, everything they noted was achievable with existing technology that the schools already possessed. When I pointed this out and asked if the Promethean boards could add anything that wasn’t already available, the question took them aback - I don’t think they’d even considered it.  After some hemming and hawing, they finally decided that Promethean boards would allow teachers to annotate videos as they were watched. For this we made a major technology investment DURING A MAJOR FINANCIAL CRISIS.

Similarly, apparently MCPS decided that a global pandemic was the time to invest in Bocce and a local museum.

Over the years, I’ve seen MCPS spend money willy-nilly on every pet project, educational fad, and technological trend that came along without considering how much they would actually contribute to education itself.   Rather than make hard choices, they’d rather whine about a lack of funding.  When it turns out that they may not be able to fund everything on their wish list, it seems like the basics get sacrificed to the prestige items.

I have nothing against bocce, museums, or smart boards.  If we had unlimited funding, I’d want the kids to have those and every other advantage anyone might wish for.  However, in the real world choices have to be made.  Maybe these items offer sufficient benefit that they should be fully funded, but we need to recognize that the consequence may mean that something else may need to be sacrificed.  I just think we should start prioritizing education and stop thinking of taxpayers as fairy godmothers who can, and should, make all their wishes come true.  [/quote]

How about electric busses, multimillion $ contracts w/multiple comms firms when MCPS already has comms people, SEL training like leader in me that almost everyone despises, a never ending stream of pointless studies that they never use for problems they can't solve,bad curriculums like benchmark, the list goes on and on. MCPS needs to amek some effort to stop throwing away money before any taxpayer should be asked to give them more.  They can't keep raising property taxes annually to address this kind of spending.[/quote]

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