by Sue Katz Miller
A Montgomery County Public Schools teacher admitted to her class recently that she dreads March. This month features an unusual stretch of four straight weeks with no holiday interruptions, punctuated only by the bleak days of Maryland School Assessments (MSAs). For parents, this is often the time of year when we finally get a handle on what is going on in the school system, and there is a corresponding rise in outrage about lack of transparency and lack of what staff refer to as "parent stakeholder input."
Budget transparency
New school board member Laura Berthiaume had the guts to cast a dissenting vote on the school budget. She objected to the fact that the Board appears to simply rubber stamp the budget drawn up by MCPS and pass it on to the County Council, only making changes at the end of the process in the spring, when the budget is basically set. Berthiaume ran on a platform of greater school budget transparency. She explained her renegade vote this way: "If the Board will not do its job, then I will cast my vote against the budget because I believe we have a job to do." Of course, insiders are calling her naïve. The citizens who elected her in November are thrilled and gratified.
Transparency in "GT" policy
Meanwhile, a battle is raging as MCPS reviews their "gifted and
talented" policy. Should students be labeled GT? Will all students
receive the services they need without labels? Can all students be
challenged if the county insists on heterogeneous classrooms? Is MCPS
quietly removing academic options, as they did last year for special
education students? All of the former "GT" staff countywide have been
relabeled, and they now tend to work with all students, rather than
those at one end of the academic spectrum. At a Board of Education
meeting at the end of February, parent Eric Marx testified, "Many
parents say that MCPS is currently gutting GT education -- that's not
quite true. Outside of math, in most schools, there is virtually no GT
education left to gut. Particularly in elementary and middle schools,
the norm long ago became 'one-size-fits-nobody'."
Transparency in grouping
There is plenty of evidence in our local schools that academic options are narrowing. Silver Spring Middle School plans to put all sixth graders into heterogeneous science classes next year, rather than offering honors and on-level classrooms. The same shift occurred at Takoma Park Middle School this year, and it's happening at "Middle School Reform" schools throughout the county. Frustrated parents have listened to the MCPS administration, the MCPS Accelerated and Enriched Instruction office, and Board of Education members all deny responsibility for pressuring schools to abandon "homogeneous" classes. But it's happening anyway.
Transparency in scheduling
Meanwhile, at Eastern Middle School, parents are questioning the county's commitment to their humanities magnet program, after the school announced a shift from an eight-period to a seven-period schedule. Many students, magnet and non-magnet, will lose their opportunity to take either arts or foreign language as a consequence. Parents of fifth-graders who had just committed to going to Eastern were particularly upset to learn of these changes after they had made the decision to send their children to the school. And some parents feel that students, many parent groups, and certain teacher stakeholder groups were cut out of the decision-making process.
Transparency in boundary options
Finally, a rowdy meeting kicked off the process of deciding which
kids will go where after the expansions at Takoma Park Elementary and
East Silver Spring Elementary are completed in 2010. The plan has
always been to have the Takoma Park neighborhood on the far east of the
city, which has been bused all the way to Sligo Creek Elementary since
the unification of Takoma Park, finally attend Takoma Park Elementary
and Piney Branch Elementary. Piney Branch needs and wants those kids,
since they are going to be losing the kids who will now stay at East
Silver Spring through fifth grade.
Over the last four
years, we were assured by the county that there were not going to be
any important implications for the middle schools. In fact, the middle
schools weren't even involved in the discussion until now.
But suddenly this year it has become apparent that Takoma Park Middle will be overenrolled under this new plan, and Silver Spring International Middle would be underenrolled. There's no easy solution, and the process of figuring it out is scheduled to drag on through the spring and fall.
Leave a comment