Welcome! A blog, run by Jennifer Abell, Vice Chair of the Charles County Board of Education, involving topics and issues on education and children. Comments are not official communications of the Charles County School Board but are a personal effort to be more transparent. Both complimentary comments and constructive criticism are not only appreciated but encouraged. Student participation is also encouraged and therefore the use of proper language and decorum is requested at all times.
"Open Thread" is a place for you to tell me what you would like to see on this site. What can I do to make it more user-friendly, topics you would like to see discussed in the future, questions or concerns. So here you go, give me your feedback.
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MY PLEDGE TO YOU
"I will serve as an educational advocate on behalf of our community in order to advance the educational vision for our schools, pursue its goals, and encourage progress as we work together in a diverse society."
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3 comments:
My first comment on the subject (releasing AP scores) will be restricted to why I submitted my FOIA to the superintendent, Mr. Richmond, but really goes to Ms. Wise.
The last BOE members were relentlessly criticized rightly or wrongly for holding "secret" meetings and for not being "open" enough about "public" business. Specifically, certain members of the BOE were constantly harassed by the public and at times by the MD Independent Op Ed for having a "secret agenda" not in harmony with the public. Often two or three BOE members were seen as being too secretive in what they wanted to "push" through as policy without public comment and were blasted by again the public and the MD Independent Op Ed.
My main purpose for requesting the release of the full disclosure of the AP scores was more in response to Ms. Wise's comment when asked about releasing the scores and she stated (and I will Para-phrase) that she did not want to embarrass any of the teachers (or students?).
That to me reminded me of exactly how the last board was perceived; secretive. Whether or not they were (the last Board) or this board is or not opens up the door for public perception like “keeping things quiet and under the rug and to ourselves and away from the public”. In other words it sounded very much like we were getting into another confrontation about “openness” and “right to know” over something that very few people were paying attention to (that doesn’t make it NOT important) and we were heading down an area of closing doors to the public (again) where that would start to be the issue rather than the issue(s).
The turmoil created around the BOE by the perception of secrecy the last time (previous BOE) brought work to a stand still. Nothing else got done except to argue the issue of what was "open" and what was "private" and everything else stymied. Personally I did not want to see that happen this time around and the issue of releasing AP scores, especially since they had been released in the past certainly did not seem to be something to me the Board should get caught up on "secrecy" with this early on while so many other things require attention.
Now that the scores are out and very few people - the same people in the county who seem to be interested in Education issues in general - are talking about them at all, it seems Ms. Wise did not have to be that concerned after all.
So, maybe and hopefully the lesson from this is that from this point on it is best to just lay it all out. The good, the bad, the ugly. Let the chips fall where they may as they say rather than fight the proverbial "open" vs. "secret" issue where nothing productive gets done ever again and we loose good people from the BOE for evermore.
What you say is certainly true and accurate.
But, the AP scores were linked by an individual on a Verizon server in another blog on this site.
I point everyone that I know that has a kid in the system to this site, and have saved the scores myself.
Mrs. Wise no longer has to be worried about the embarrassment occurring due to the release of the scores, it's already happened.
Is there a way for the BOE and schools to merge their calendars so that Board meetings and school PTO meetings are not held on the same nights (days)?
When they are scheduled on the same dates it makes it difficult -acutally impossible - for parents to attend both.
Just a thought.
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