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January 2010
Seven Resolutions for the New Decade
by Sue Katz Miller
The end of a decade provides a crucial opportunity to “stop and think,” in the immortal words of one school anti-bullying program. Every year at this time, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Jerry Weast asks for half of the county budget for our schools. This year, huge shortfalls are predicted in the wake of the recession, and Weast has, as he does each year, threatened painful cuts designed to stimulate parent demands for full funding of his proposed schools budget.
But some of us have lost patience with what appears to be emotional manipulation in order to fund a budget heavy on central office expenses. In addition to the new decade, we have substantive reasons to step back now and take a look at where our schools are heading. First of all, Weast plans to retire in 2011, and the opportunity to choose a new direction inspires reflection. Worrisome recent indicators (our high schools have dropped off a prestigious “best” list, and the achievement gap is stubbornly persistent) cast doubt on the greatness of MCPS. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is overdue to begin scrutinizing No Child Left Behind, and presumably listening to parents who decry the pernicious side effects of federally-mandated high-stakes testing.
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Q & A:
Sue Katz Miller
and Denise Jones
In my years as a PTA President, Denise Jones was the NAACP Parents Council Representative and my constant sounding board and partner in advocacy. She inspired me with her fearless demands for information and her tendency to show up in her child’s class for reality checks. We began having marathon weekly tete-a-tetes on education. And we still do, despite the fact that her daughter moved to private school for sixth grade, three years ago. I respect her decision, and recognize that we each have to make the best decision for each child. At the same time, I am disturbed by the flight of children like Denise’s daughter, high-achieving children of color, from public schools. So I sat down with Denise recently, and recorded our chat.
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“Parent Insistently Advocating”
by Sue Katz Miller
As the year draws to a close, schools usually reward parents with mugs and luncheons and certificates to thank them for volunteering. This year, some parents felt they were also rewarded with a slap from the Board of Education for being too involved. At a school board meeting in May, board vice president Pat O’Neill insisted on the right of Principals to exclude “PIAs, the pain in the ass people” from the School Improvement Teams (SITs) composed of parents and staff in each school. Member Chris Barclay stated that “cooperative” and “respectful” parents may be more likely to get invited to the teams.
Feisty new member Laura Berthiaume stood up for PIAs: “If the team is composed of people who always say “yes,” and never say “no,” and never say “but,” then what you get unfortunately is a war in Iraq. It’s important that it not be an echo chamber, but that it be a community dialogue.” A video of the exchange (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OBYBxO-BAc) was posted by the Parents Coalition, a group of proud PIAs.
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More chess, less violence
by Sue Katz Miller
State Senator Jamie Raskin wants to launch a national “chess movement.” In his first move, he plans to use chess to capture every school in Montgomery County and promote the game as an alternative to gang violence. Or at least that is the goal of “All the Right Moves,” a new organization founded by Raskin, school guidance counselor Fernando Moreno, Impact Silver Spring, and a coalition of community activists. Raskin will announce the creation of All the Right Moves and a new chess tournament at a kickoff event in downtown Silver Spring on Friday, May 9th at 5pm on Ellsworth Avenue.
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photo by Julie Waitt |
Sue hands out the latest school gossip
by Sue Katz Miller
In April, cherry blossoms drift through the sunshine, student minds warm and wander, and information starts to flow behind the teacher’s back. In the 1970s, I would fold a paper note up into a small square or triangle, and decorate the front with psychedelic Peter Max bubble letters drawn with fine-line markers. As the note passed from hand to hand below the desktops, everyone in the row could admire the artwork spelling out “Sandy” or “Paul.” Nowadays, I guess maybe students text on the sly instead. Anyway, in the sneaky spirit of spring, I pass you the current school gossip.
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Q & A: Sue Katz Miller
and Paul Weckstein
Under the Obama administration, will there be substantive changes to the powerful federal legislation known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?
As Co-Director of the Center for Law and Education, Takoma Park resident Paul Weckstein helped to mold that law. His work has involved mild-mannered policy wonking, but also acting up and suing the government. Weckstein sat down with Voice columnist Sue Katz Miller to discuss the benefits and flaws of NCLB.
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Photo by Julie Wiatt |
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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.”
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Homeschooling for a day
by Sue Katz Miller
Some days, I get so frustrated with the enormous school system bureaucracy that I wish I had the patience to homeschool my children. Inauguration Day almost fooled me into believing I could do it. Our family had a transcendent experience participating in history together. And if we had left it up to the Superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, that experience never would have happened. Jerry Weast declared back in November that our children would have to go to school on January 20th, and not only that, but the middle school and high school kids would have to take semester final exams that day.
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Esperanza Loaiza Bond and Casey Goldvale will remember their cold day on the Mall for the rest of their lives.
Photo by Eric Bond |
Extraordinary Cooperation Brings Back Hidden Gem
by Sue Katz Miller
This month, the Piney Branch Pool, the only public indoor pool in Montgomery County inside the beltway open to families, opens its doors once again. A Grand Opening was scheduled for January 6, with a plan for local officials to jump into the pool.
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Mayor Bruce Williams and Piney Branch principal Bertram Generlette ("Mr G") took the plunge to celebrate the reopening of the pool.
Photo by Julie Wiatt |
The Millers go to Birmingham
by Sue Katz Miller
A few weeks before we elected Barack Obama as President, I happen to be walking the empty downtown streets of Birmingham, Alabama, with my husband, teenage daughter, and 11-year-old son, en route to the Civil Rights Institute. We are in town for a wedding, and my son is complaining about having to spend a sunny afternoon in a dark museum. I explain that he needs to understand more deeply the history of race in America, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and the ghosts that haunt Birmingham. Then my son turns to me and asks, “What’s the Ku Klux Klan?”
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Inscribed “I ain’t afraid of your jail,” this sculpture commemorates the 1963 Children’s March to protest the arrest of Dr. King in Birmingham. |
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by Sue Katz Miller
A nightmare budget is looming, and a long shadow creeps over our school system. Unions may have to renegotiate their contracts and accept smaller increases. We may have to fight to keep transportation for our kids to get to school. We will certainly have to fight for smaller class sizes, parent outreach services, special education programming, gifted programming, greener schools, healthier school lunches, and anything else that might cost money.
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These book-laden kids NEED yoga! |
Experiments in local schools
by Sue Katz Miller
Here in Takoma Park and Silver Spring, we want our school system to yield the largest and broadest group possible of highly educated students. We want all of our kids to have access to as much “rigor” as they want, or need, or can handle.
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Promote a lazy summer worthy of nostalgia for your kids
by Sue Katz Miller
When I was a moody teenager, my father often attributed it to weltschmertz, or “world pain,” a German word for romantic sorrow caused by the cruelty of life. Lately, my 14-year-old daughter and her friends are the ones prone to fits of weltschmertz. One reason is that they are about to scatter to different high schools in our vast county school system.
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Come on in, the water’s fine!
by Sue Katz Miller
We did it. The Piney Branch Pool will reopen in the fall. Am I underwater, sounds distorted by liquid, mishearing this news? Should I hop on one foot and knock the water out of my ear? But no, it’s true. It was the worst budget situation in years, and somehow we still did it. As a community, we worked together across the lines of income and age and ability and race. Our passion for the pool was relentless and ultimately compelling.
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by Sue Katz Miller
Can some good come out of a budget cut? While Blair High School magnet students were picketing MCPS last month over proposed cuts to their program, Takoma Park Middle School (TPMS) peacefully accepted similar cuts. In both cases, magnet teachers are being asked to shift from teaching four classes to teaching five, creating more equity between the teaching loads of magnet and non-magnet teachers.
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Jackson Schaeffer stands before his artistic legacy at Takoma Park Middle School |
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by Sue Katz Miller
Throughout Silver Spring and Takoma Park, the public school tradition known as International Night often turns into an ecstatic, global lovefest: everyone’s favorite PTA event of the year. We marvel at the intact and intricate skills of children who have carried so many ancient cultures with them to the DC area. We delight at the innocence of children who dive in and try on the dances and outfits and cuisines of their classmates, at the way they feel the right to do this, at everything they have gained by growing up in our glittering mosaic.
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by Sue Katz Miller
If you went to American public schools anytime in the latter half of the twentieth century, you probably didn’t learn much geography. I know I didn’t. We’ve all read the dire National Geographic Society statistics: half of young Americans can’t find New York, Japan or India on a map, and only 37 percent can find Iraq. And now the decline is accelerating with the general decline in social studies.
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