There are simple fixes to cases like this:

* Only licensed teachers supervising students during school day.

* Suspending a student from regular class should mean a day of social/behavioral education, not a day hanging out with a rent a cop. Removing education from the kids who need it most is *insane*.

* No 1:1 adult:child alone in a room all day <-- all adult *volunteers* take a mandatory child abuse training where we learn that we are not allowed to *ever* be alone with a child. So why is the school *mandating* all day 1:1 alone time for in-school suspension?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What this tells me is that MCPS was so desperate to fill positions, they did not do basic background checks to weed out criminals from obtaining positions within the school system.

This has gone too far. I feel McKnight, her Central Office support staff, and the legacy members of the BOE are completely incompetent and need to be fired / voted out.

The problem is that Wolffe was just narrowly re-elected and she's McKnight's biggest supporter. This means that we could be stuck with them at least three more years.

I think your assessment is right, and it's downright depressing.

And now we face a huge property tax hike, "for the schools". Is that to fund paying an MCPS background check person to type the name of the person into Google before they approve the hire?

The tax hike is so Elrich and co. can do absolutely nothing to reign in the rampant spending by MCPS for useless things like increasing the central office staff that do nothing. I mean it's not like they're doing background checks or selecting the best curriculum (benchmark, Curriculum 2.0). They routinely commission these random studies like anti-bias studies or boundary studies that never get used. They fund SEL lite training like Leader in Me which apparently, everyone hates. They give millions to the Kid's Museum and nobody knows why other than a board member's wife runs the place. Money is embezzled and nobody realizes it for years. Before they even consider raising taxes they need to get their house in order and reign in the spending.

Anonymous wrote:What this tells me is that MCPS was so desperate to fill positions, they did not do basic background checks to weed out criminals from obtaining positions within the school system.

This has gone too far. I feel McKnight, her Central Office support staff, and the legacy members of the BOE are completely incompetent and need to be fired / voted out.

The problem is that Wolffe was just narrowly re-elected and she's McKnight's biggest supporter. This means that we could be stuck with them at least three more years.

Yes, vote in Republicans who will also ensure American history is taught like Florida! /s

Anonymous wrote:What this tells me is that MCPS was so desperate to fill positions, they did not do basic background checks to weed out criminals from obtaining positions within the school system.

This has gone too far. I feel McKnight, her Central Office support staff, and the legacy members of the BOE are completely incompetent and need to be fired / voted out.

The problem is that Wolffe was just narrowly re-elected and she's McKnight's biggest supporter. This means that we could be stuck with them at least three more years.

I think your assessment is right, and it's downright depressing.

And now we face a huge property tax hike, "for the schools". Is that to fund paying an MCPS background check person to type the name of the person into Google before they approve the hire?

What this tells me is that MCPS was so desperate to fill positions, they did not do basic background checks to weed out criminals from obtaining positions within the school system.

This has gone too far. I feel McKnight, her Central Office support staff, and the legacy members of the BOE are completely incompetent and need to be fired / voted out.

The problem is that Wolffe was just narrowly re-elected and she's McKnight's biggest supporter. This means that we could be stuck with them at least three more years.

Time in and time out, MCPS demonstrates that not enough is being done to keep sexual predators out of MCPS schools. Parents and community advocates have raised suggestions to the BOE with very little change to their status quo. As a result, it’s easy for sexual predators to be hired by MCPS and stay employed in MCPS till legal action is taken by MCPD. Waiting till that point means a student is a victim of a serious felony offense within an MCPS school.

MCPS administrators and the BOE should be ashamed of their lack of protections of MCPS students. All employees should have a thorough background check and violations of the MCPS Employee Code of Conduct should be dismissible offenses.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder what the threshold is for a background check. His prior was juvy robbery and a $50 fine and time served for solicitation.

If you look at the actual charges in Maryland case search, the "juvy robbery" was charged as an adult and included first degree assault and other charges.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

To chaperone my middle schooler's Busch Gardens instrumental music event, I HAVE TO GET A BACKGROUND CHECK AND FINGERPRINTS, and do child abuse and neglect training.

What about this guy who works in a school on a daily basis?!!!? We need some sort of class action lawsuit on all the sexual assaults that have happened in MCPS, with all of us parents as plaintiffs, and accuse MCPS of knowingly creating an unsafe environment for our children.

+1 I'm not a sue happy person, and lawyers actually get on my nerves, but I think it's long passed time for MCPS to be held accountable for their many failings here.

I am now also starting to believe that MCPS central office is just a bloated machine that sucks up taxpayer money with very little to show for it. Clearly, the people hired to do the vetting aren't doing their jobs, yet MCPS is probably wanting to create more central Admin staff rather than funding more teachers. And Elrich wants to increase taxes to meet the bloated budget demands by MCPS, which again, wants to increase central admin staff.

MCPS central office is filled with people with education administration degrees doing jobs that actually require expertise in their subjects. Like communications or human resources or community engagement. They use central office as a place to put misbehaving admins (look at Casey Crouse and Maniya Jules) to get them out of schools but they then end up taking jobs that aren't actually their expertise or training. Their default assumption is that ANY system job can be filled by an educator/administrator, and that's just not true.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wood parent here. I hope those parents sue MCPS for A LOT of money.

I think all Wood parents should ban together for a class action lawsuit for endangering ALL the kids there.

You know who funds that successful lawsuit, don’t you? You.

How about you stop voting for politicians who support this garbage?

Yes, please.

Great to give criminals a second chance, but maybe not have them working with kids. That’s just dumb.

When do we finally accept the obvious fact that those in power have a very different goal than most of us do?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wood parent here. I hope those parents sue MCPS for A LOT of money.

I think all Wood parents should ban together for a class action lawsuit for endangering ALL the kids there.

PP here. And I don’t disagree with you. I’m sitting here talking to my spouse about this right now. What can we do, because I’m tired of sitting idly by while MCPS puts my kid in danger. How do we as parents even begin to demand answers and accountability? I’m not even talking about a financial settlement—I don’t want MCPSs money. I just want them to do their jobs. I am open to any thought people have, truly.

A few things:
1. Attend BOE meetings and bring it up during public comment. Be sane and calm -- they get some crackpots who testify and no one pays attention.
2. MCPS doesn't have an internal auditor, but you can file a report with the MoCo auditor alleging fraud since that person should not have been hired if a backgroujnd check was done, so there must be some issue. It's a long shot, but at least they'll need to look into it somewhat.
3. Similar to #2, file a claim with the state department of education.

Godspeed. We just gave up and moved to private but we're blessed to have that option, and many families don't.

We tried this about something else. Honestly, the BOE is dismissive, even if you do have a group of calm and sane parents. They’re pretty useless.

Wish we could afford private, but it would affect our ability to help with college, so we’re just counting the years until we’re done with horrible MCPS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wood parent here. I hope those parents sue MCPS for A LOT of money.

I think all Wood parents should ban together for a class action lawsuit for endangering ALL the kids there.

PP here. And I don’t disagree with you. I’m sitting here talking to my spouse about this right now. What can we do, because I’m tired of sitting idly by while MCPS puts my kid in danger. How do we as parents even begin to demand answers and accountability? I’m not even talking about a financial settlement—I don’t want MCPSs money. I just want them to do their jobs. I am open to any thought people have, truly.

A few things:
1. Attend BOE meetings and bring it up during public comment. Be sane and calm -- they get some crackpots who testify and no one pays attention.
2. MCPS doesn't have an internal auditor, but you can file a report with the MoCo auditor alleging fraud since that person should not have been hired if a backgroujnd check was done, so there must be some issue. It's a long shot, but at least they'll need to look into it somewhat.
3. Similar to #2, file a claim with the state department of education.

Godspeed. We just gave up and moved to private but we're blessed to have that option, and many families don't.

2nd security guard who is a sex offender with a record.