Jennifer Eller, a transgender woman, has filed a discrimination complaint against Prince George’s County Public Schools, saying school officials did not take sufficient action when she was repeatedly harassed, insulted, misgendered and threatened. (Calla Kessler / The Washington Post)

By Donna St. George – The Washington Post

Every morning, she woke up fearing what the day would bring. Jennifer Eller loved her work as an English teacher in Maryland’s schools. But as a transgender woman, she said she was taunted, accused of being a pedophile and a pervert, and threatened.

The toll grew too much.

Eller reported incident after incident to officials in the Prince George’s County school system, she said — starting in 2011, when she first came out to her principal and began living more openly as a woman while teaching English at Kenmoor Middle School in Landover.

The school system failed to effectively intervene as she was repeatedly harassed by students, parents and colleagues, she said. She transferred twice to new schools. When she filed formal complaints after four years, she alleges school officials retaliated.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined her claims had merit, finding reasonable cause to believe she had been treated unlawfully and retaliated against, according to her attorneys.

“This is about who I am, and everyone has the right to be who they are,” she said in an interview.

Her story has begun to emerge in federal court records in Maryland, where her lawyers filed a lawsuit alleging that the school system violated constitutional protections and federal, state and county laws by discriminating against Eller on the basis of sex and transgender status.

Nationally, advocates cite other public struggles or court cases involving transgender educators — in Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Texas— but they say Eller’s lawsuit stands out.

“As a transgender person asserting her right to do her job in peace without harassment and discrimination, she is setting a really important example and sending a really important message,” said Eliza Byard, executive director of GLSEN, which advocates on LGBT issues in K-12 education.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, one of Eller’s attorneys, argues that inclusiveness and diversity should come with the territory in a public school system — and that others in the region have adopted elaborate and affirming guidelines, including the District and Montgomery County.

“What we have here is a problem that is truly systemic,” he said.

Prince George’s County school officials declined to comment on the case, saying they do not discuss pending litigation.

They noted a 2017 school board resolution expressing support for the rights of transgender students and cited a procedure that allows students and staff to file complaints about discrimination and harassment. Schools spokeswoman Raven Hill said county schools follow State Department of Education guidance on youth gender identity nondiscrimination.

Eller, 41, said she took a job with the state’s second-largest school system in 2008. She had grown up in Minnesota, gone to college in South Dakota and earned a master’s degree in her home state. Along the way, she worked with children — and discovered a calling.

She followed teaching jobs to Maryland.

At Kenmoor Middle, she said she was English department head for a year and led a poetry club. But problems arose after she informed the principal she would be transitioning and wore more traditionally feminine clothing, she said. Students called her a pedophile, and other harassment ensued, her complaint said.

An administrator told her not to wear dresses or skirts because it would make people uncomfortable, it alleged. A human re­sources representative called a note from her therapist about her transition “garbage” and insisted that she appear as male, it said.

“I wasn’t being flamboyant,” Eller said. “I wasn’t shoving this in people’s faces. I was trying to do this within their parameters as much as I could, in keeping with my own mental and physical health.”

Hoping for a fresh start, Eller transferred to Friendly High School in Fort Washington. There for five years, she taught English, including Advanced Placement classes, while serving as a sponsor for the National Honor Society and the Gay-Straight Alliance.

But it was not an improvement.

“My first year there, I felt like an animal in a zoo: People would stand outside my classroom door as I was teaching and stare at me,” she said.

“I felt like an animal in a zoo: People would stand outside my classroom door as I was teaching and stare at me.” — Jennifer Eller, a transgender teacher in Prince George’s County schools.

Eller’s 41-page complaint alleges numerous incidents at Friendly, describing times when students called her “mister” or “he/she” or asked her about the appearance of her genitals.

In 2012, a Friendly student and his friends encountered Eller in a parking lot and threatened to rape her and make her “their girlfriend,” the document said.

Eller said she reported that incident — as she had many others — but it, like most of those she called out, appeared to go nowhere. The student denied it, and Eller was told there was nothing the administration could do, according to the court filing.

“There were very few days when something didn’t happen,” Eller said.

The lawsuit details a long line of incidents by date in 2015-2016: when two students in a hallway called Eller “a guy in a dress”; when a student stepped hard on her foot, saying “tranny” as he walked away; when a student greeted her approach by telling a classmate, “I’m not speaking to it.”

Sometimes, the offensive behavior came from parents, she said.

When she was home at night or alone during a lunch break, she said in an interview, her situation would often sink in.

“That’s when I felt the horror of being treated as subhuman,” she said.

An administrator referred to her as “sir” or “mister,” even though she arrived at Friendly after her transition, the suit said. The school system took three years to change the name on Eller’s email address — meaning her transgender status was revealed to those who emailed her. Her old name remains in an employee directory today, the court filing noted.

Eller repeatedly asked administrators for transgender awareness training for students, administrators and staff, and for educational materials about transgender identities in student and staff libraries, according to the suit.

It was 2015 when Eller filed formal complaints: first with the school system, then with the federal EEOC.

She asserts that she was retaliated against afterward — losing her Advanced Placement English classes and brought to a disciplinary hearing. Eller was accused of throwing a pen at a student, not properly teaching, shouting at students and causing them to fear for their safety. She denies the allegations. She was not sanctioned, the suit said.

FILE PHOTO — The ExxonMobil refinery in Baton Rouge is pictured on Monday Oct. 23, 2017. ADVOCATE STAFF PHOTO BY BILL FEIG

In the Public Interest, a nonpartisan organization that fights privatization of public assets, reports good news from Louisiana:

ExxonMobil is the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas corporation, often cutting deals with authoritarian leaders in countries like Angola, Nigeria, Chad, Mozambique and Equatorial Guinea. Its fourth-quarter profit last year nearly quintupled to $8.38 billion after new Federal tax cuts.

Louisiana’s East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has a $30 million budget deficit and teacher shortage due to public corruption. Its school buildings and buses are crumbling. Ninety-seven percent of its students, the majority of which are black or brown, qualify for free or reduced lunch. Teachers and school employees haven’t had an across-the-board pay raise since 2008.

Yet, ExxonMobil has received $700 million in local property tax exemptions from the parish over the last 20 years.

Not anymore.

Earlier this month, the school board narrowly voted against giving ExxonMobil two property tax breaks totaling about $2.9 million over a decade, one for a refinery and one for a chemical plant. Both facilities have already been built, which left some school board members scratching their heads.

“I would be a lot more receptive for a new project, something that’s going to bring in new business, new jobs,” one board member said.

But this isn’t just a story of elected officials making a rational decision based on the facts. It’s also one about democracy— and one that rings out even louder after striking teachers in Los Angeles, California, just won more resources and support for their students.

A teacher walkout threat set the stage in Baton Rouge. Last October, teachers and school support staff voted overwhelmingly to hold a one-day school shutdown to demand that the school board reject ExxonMobil’s request. Within hours, the requests were taken off the agenda for a forthcoming board meeting. Then, after last week’s board vote, ExxonMobil dropped the bids for good.

A company representative says that losing the tax breaks could make them hesitate to invest in the local plants because of a “lack of predictability” and “confusion.”

But the teachers know something much bigger than one corporation’s future is on the line. “The survival of public education is at stake,” said the president of the East Baton Rouge Parish Association of Educators back in October.

She’s right. The idea that taxes should be perpetually cut on corporations and the wealthy — known as “trickle-down economics” — is gutting public education nationwide, falling the hardest on poor, black, and brown communities.

Total state and local K-12 funding per student is still well below what it was before the 2008 recession. Seventeen states actually send more education dollars to wealthier districts than to high-poverty ones. Over 1.5 million students attend a school that has a law enforcement officer, but no school counselor. Spending on prisons and jails has increased at triple the rate of public education funding in the last three decades.

Until we get real about how out of whack our tax system is, more and more students are going to go to schools with no heat, aging pipes, few supplies, and few adults other than police officers and underpaid teachers.

And the quickest path to getting real is more democracy, teachers fighting and making their voices heard alongside parents and communities for what’s best for all public school students.

Read more >>> The Advocate: ITEP critics defeat ExxonMobil tax break requests at School Board; here are next steps

Please help us share this story on social media.

Broderick Bagert, lead organizer of Together Baton Rouged, speaks during a discussion of the costs of industrial tax exemptions for East Baton Rouge Parish, at TBR’s monthly luncheon at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge, Tuesday, May 23, 2017.

Louisiana State Capitol – Baton Rouge

***

Five children — all from the same extended family among them Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) students — died in a car crash early Saturday morning in Prince George’s County, according to Maryland State Police.

Firefighters responded around 5 a.m. to an accident on Route 301 between Route 214 and Pointer Ridge Drive, where a 2005 Chrysler Pacifica veered off the highway and hit multiple trees, ejecting the five children inside and injuring the two adults in the front seats.

The Pacifica was traveling north on Route 301 when, for an unknown reason, it went off the left side of the road and into the woods. It began to spin in the snow-covered field, police said, throwing the children from the car. There was only one vehicle involved in the crash.

Police identified London Dixon, 8, and Paris Dixon, 5, both children of Taylor from Bowie, attended PGCPS Northview Elementary School; and Zion Beard, 14, Rickelle Ricks, 6, and Damari Herald, 15, all from Washington, D.C., as the victims. They were pronounced dead at the scene.

Police don’t yet know what caused the crash, but haven’t ruled out any possibilities. They believe the children weren’t properly seat-belted. A standard 2005 Chrysler Pacifica seats six, with two front passenger seats and four rear seats — there were seven passengers in the car.

Dominique R. Taylor, 32, of Bowie, and Cornell D. Simon, 23, of Oxon Hill, survived the crash but suffered injuries. They’re being treated at University of Maryland Prince George’s Hospital Center. Police identified Taylor as the driver of the vehicle and Simon as a front seat passenger.

Gov. Larry Hogan expressed his sympathy in a tweet.

“Deeply saddened by this tragic auto accident in Prince George’s County. Praying for everyone involved, including first responders,” he wrote Saturday.

Later in the afternoon, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks also expressed her sympathy in a tweet in the afternoon.

“My thoughts and prayers are with the family members of the five children killed, and the two adults being treated for their injuries, following a tragic accident on Route 301 early this morning. PGPD is assisting @MDSP as they thoroughly investigate this incident,” she wrote Saturday afternoon.

A woman identifying herself as a grandmother to several of the children took to social media Sunday, saying her family was experiencing “loss like no other.”

“My heart is broken,” Sarita Johnson-Herald wrote in the post.

An investigation is ongoing. State police announced just after 11 a.m. that all lanes of Route 301 have been reopened.

Authorities are investigating a deadly crash in Bowie, Maryland, that left five children dead.

Authorities are investigating a deadly crash in Bowie, Maryland, that left five children dead.

***

Metro Nashville Public Schools steered $1.8 million in no-bid contracts to a software company with whom Director of Schools Dr. Shawn Joseph had done business in the past, violating state purchasing laws, a NewsChannel 5 investigation has discovered.

Frogge told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that, about the same time, she began to hear rumblings about the relationship between Joseph and Sams.

“Multiple employees were coming to me with serious concerns about Performance Matters,” Frogge said. “They said that both the salesman and the project manager for Performance Matters told them, ‘You are going to get these products.’”

We asked, “Whether you want them or not?”

“Right,” Frogge replied. “And there were conversations along the lines, you know, we’ve got Dr. Joseph on speed dial. If you don’t do this, we’ll call your boss — that kind of thing.”

A separate Metro Schools source confirmed similar conversations.

Emails show employees questioned need

Internal emails show that veteran employees were not sure what Performance Matters’ Unify platform could do that the school system’s own “data warehouse” did not already do.

The data warehouse is an in-house product that was developed specifically to meet the district’s needs in tracking student progress.

Metro Schools argues “there was confusion among staff” who simply did not understand the intentions of their new leadership.

In fact, the emails reveal frustrations that Joseph and his team had seemingly not taken the time to learn what MNPS’ existing system could do before they turned to Performance Matters.

“No one here really knows what the intent [is] for this,” wrote Dr. Tina Stenson, the district’s director of research and evaluation.

Toni Russell, then the executive director of technology and information resources, was trying to figure out “what problem are we trying to solve?”

“My first impression of what I saw with Performance Matters was it was simply a way of presenting data in the DW [data warehouse] pretty,” Russell continued.

Dr. David Williams, then the interim executive director of curriculum and instruction, admitted, “Honestly, I don’t know the answer to hardly any of your questions.”

“I don’t know the rationale for moving in this direction,” Williams added, “other than our new leadership has experience with it and likes the product.”

We showed the emails to Frogge.

“Those are exactly the kinds of concerns I was hearing,” the school board member said.

Metro Schools says the intention was to replace another assessment platform that the district was using, although no other companies were invited to demonstrate their products.

In fact, the emails also show that a potential competitor got wind that Performance Matters was in the building and wanted to know whether her company would have a chance to vie for the district’s business.

Paul Changas, MNPS’ executive director for research, assessment and evaluation, assured the competitor that the district would eventually release a formal Requests for Proposals (RFP) to all interested bidders.

“I expect an RFP process and an opportunity for vendors to have the same opportunity,” Changas emailed.

But that never happened.

“What I have seen time and again with this administration is that our employees are trying to do the right thing, but the administration has shown that they have been willing to skirt the rules, to violate the policy in some instances,” Frogge said.

“And they are hiding information about spending.”

No-bid contract awarded to Performance Matters

Instead, Joseph’s team convinced the school board to give Performance Matters what turned out to be a million-dollar, no-bid contract — without waiting for the results of a pilot program and without giving any other company a chance to compete.

Under the terms of the 2016 contract, Metro Schools agreed to pay up to $72,000 for the last six months of the 2016-17 school year for the pilot project, then $387,000 per year for 2017-18 and 2018-19 for all 86,000 Nashville students. (View Performance Matters contracts here .)

Joseph and his team defended the no-bid contract, saying they engaged in a practice called “piggybacking” — in this case, duplicating a Performance Matters contract with Orange County Public Schools in Florida, which had been put out for bids.

Advocates argue piggybacking can help governments save money.

But former Baltimore County Schools superintendent Dallas Dance, who served on Joseph’s transition team when he came to Nashville, was sentenced to six months in jail last year for failing to disclose money he took from a vendor.

Court records show Dance steered no-bid contracts to that vendor using the piggyback method after the vendor indicated “his least favorite letters are RFP.”

At a recent board meeting, Joseph responded to those concerns, saying: “We have had people across the country do bad things. We have not.”

Still, in Tennessee, state law only allows local governments to piggyback on contracts that have been put out for bids by other governmental units “of this state.”

“The way I read the code it does not speak to piggybacking on contracts outside the state,” said retired state auditor Dennis Dycus, who headed up the division in the state Comptroller’s Offices that watchdogs municipal governments.

Metro Schools agreed that the contract did violate state law.

In its written statement, the district said staff simply misinterpreted the law, insisting they “were acting in good faith and with the full intention of being good steward of taxpayers’ dollars.”

A district spokesperson also noted that the contract was signed by an attorney with the Metro Department of Law.

Metro Law Director Jon Cooper said the attorney’s signature was designed to show approval of how the contract was drafted, not for the procurement process.

“There is nothing legally objectionable about the terms of the contract itself,” Cooper said in an email to NewsChannel 5 Investigates.

Still, “in hindsight,” Cooper said, “the attorney who signed the contract should probably have recognized that the underlying contract was procured by an out-of-state government entity and raised a question about it.”

State law also says piggyback contracts “shall be made on the same terms … as regular purchases of the purchasing entity.”

But, in this case, the Florida contract had one set of compensation terms; Metro Schools negotiated completely different terms.

“It has to be the same contract, there cannot be any changes in that contract,” Dycus said.

Generally speaking, those kinds of scenarios, the retired auditor said, raise all sorts of red flags.

“Being the mindset I have as an auditor, I have to ask the question: why did they change?” he added. “And, as a rule, they change it to benefit somebody — and I would want to know why.”

Second no-bid contract awarded to Performance Matters

But that wasn’t the only contract that Dr. Joseph’s team steered to Performance Matters.

In 2016, MNPS signed a second contract for $845,651 — again with no bids — for the company’s TrueNorthLogic platform. That platform is designed to track professional development training for teachers.

At the time, internal emails show Metro Schools was paying another company $6,250 a month for its SchoolNet service.

Performance Matters offered its product for what turned out to be a $118,000 set-up fee, plus $12,862 a month – more than double the previous monthly cost.

MNPS claimed that higher offer was piggybacked on a Shelby County contract with Performance Matters, although the district again changed the terms of the deal.

In the end, Joseph’s team decided to go with the higher price.

We showed the numbers to Amy Frogge.

“That’s just an absurd jump,” Frogge said. “I don’t know why we would be paying that much more for the same product.”

In June 2018, MNPS director of purchasing Jeff Gossage told the school board that, while he did not work for the district when those contracts were signed, he had been told that Metro Schools was facing a time crunch that forced them to go with Performance Matters without conducting its own bidding process.

“My understanding is we were at a point where we didn’t have time to conduct a normal RFP process,” Gossage said.

Joseph did not attempt to correct Gossage during that board meeting, nor did any member of his team.

In fact, the district had initially been told that SchoolNet planned to stop offering that professional development service in April 2017.

But emails obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates show that then-director of purchasing Gary Appenfelder learned in mid-November 2016 that SchoolNet would keep offering its program at least through June 2018 at the same price of $6,250 a month.

The company had “further agreed to discuss service support continuance beyond that point, if desired,”  Appenfelder said in a later email .

In other words, contrary to what the board was told, there actually had been time to put the contract out for bids.

“The only reason that the PM (TrueNorthLogic) PD Management product has been considered and pursued is because … it is immediately available without going through a formal solicitation,” Appenfelder wrote in an email to MNPS leadership.

“But the immediacy of that need has been removed.”

Still, Joseph’s team presented that Performance Matters contract to the board for approval on November 29, 2016, and executed the final contract about a month later.

Frogge said the emails confirm her suspicions.

“The administration is not being truthful with us, they are just not being truthful,” the school board member said.

We noted, “It sounds like they didn’t want to bid this out.”

“No,” Frogge agreed. “I think that’s the consistent theme on this particular contract. They didn’t want to bid it. They wanted to rush it through.”

MNPS goes beyond school board’s contract approvals

As NewsChannel 5 Investigates previously revealed , the school board approved a two-year, $594,000 contract for the Performance Matters student assessment platform, but Joseph’s team signed a three-year, $1 million contract.

The board approved a two-year, $530,000 professional development contract; then the district signed a three-year, $845,000 contract.

Altogether, contracts that should have been drawn up for $1.1 million were increased to $1.8 million.

At the June 2018 meeting, Joseph told the school board that the former purchasing director, Gary Appenfelder, went off on his own and negotiated new terms — to get a better price –without even telling his boss, chief operating officer Chris Henson.

“He was able to re-negotiate a cheaper rate than what the board originally approved. It did extend the contract, but because it was a cheaper contract, he went ahead and did it. He did it without consulting with me,” Joseph said.

Turning to Henson, the director of schools continued: “I’m not sure if he spoke with you. I believe he had not consulted with you on the issue, but he was looking for the best interest of the district to get a cheaper rate and went ahead and did that.”

In reviewing hundreds of pages of emails involving the Performance Matters contract, NewsChannel 5 Investigates never saw any indication that Appenfelder engaged in any such negotiations that resulted in a lower price in exchange for a longer term nor that he informed his bosses that they were signing contracts that differed from what the board had approved.

Metro Schools was unable to provide any documentation to back up Joseph’s claims.

However, the emails do reveal that Performance Matters was eager to enhance the numbers on its books before the end of 2017.

“Dec 31 is the end of the PM fiscal year,” Appenfelder emailed. “Their primary objective is to have executed contracts in hand before the end of the FY. This is doable.”

A few weeks later, it was announced

Principal Gorman Brown will be on leave until further notice. The circumstances of the altercation are under investigation.

By Reform Sasscer Staff:

SPRINGDALE, Md.  – A Prince George’s County Public Schools principal is on leave after an alleged assault that ended with a 17-year-old student getting pepper-sprayed and with tears in his eyes.

A school resource officer at Charles Herbert Flowers High School told police that the student assaulted principal Gorman Brown. The school said the principal and the student were in a physical altercation caught on video Wednesday.

The video, widely shared among students and parents, appears to show Principal Gorman Brown in a major brawl with a boy student, believed to be 17, swinging at each other in the school hallway. A caption on the video, filmed on a cellphone, suggests that Brown “hit him first.”

School officials are now looking into information that there was a separate altercation involving the student prior to what is shown in the video.

Late Wednesday evening, police confirmed that they are investigating the incident.

They say the incident occurred around 1:20 p.m. Wednesday afternoon when the principal was asked to find a 17-year-old who had just left a classroom after being disruptive.

They say a Prince George’s County Police Resource Officer was present during the incident.

According to police, the SRO intervened and pepper sprayed the student. The student’s face was washed and he refused further medical treatment. Because he is a juvenile, police will not release his name or details on any charges. But police say the student was released from custody.

Area 3 Associate Superintendent, Dr. Carletta T. Marrow, confirmed the incident in a letter to parents and guardians dated February 6. “Earlier today, there was an alleged physical altercation between a student and Principal Gorman Brown,” the letter read.

“The circumstances are under investigation. Mr Brown has been placed on leave until further notice. Assistant Principal Ronald Miller will serve as Administrator in Charge in the interim.

“The safety of our students and staff members is our top priority. Safe learning environments are our collective responsibility. Today’s incident is not in line with our school mission and values.

“Please discuss with your child acceptable behaviors that support a positive school climate. Concerns about safety or well-being should be shared with a trusted adult.”

Brown was previously in the news after he and two other Prince George’s County Public Schools employees sued Herbert Flowers High following the discovery of a hidden surveillance camera inside the principal’s office.

Brown, along with resident principal Mar-C Holland and secretary Donna Bussey, said the camera was disguised as a smoke detector and may have been installed in 2016, reported Fox 5 DC. We covered that story here previously.

According to the lawsuit, the camera was discovered on April 13, 2018, although it is still unclear who authorized it to be installed. The lawsuit stated that the camera could have not only recorded staff members getting changed in the office, but also the school’s Pom team.

There has been many fights throughout the Prince George’s County School District which are being covered up by the administration. At the moment, Crossland High School followed by Dr. Henry Wise High School carries the flag as the epicenter of area school fights. Many parents have complained repeatedly of various youth fights with the aggressors walking away without consequences. A mother recently called while upset after she said staff didn’t intervene in school fight timely as her daughter was being clobbered.

If you have any information regarding the incident, call (301) 772-4930.

The letter sent home regarding the incident to parents is attached below:

Principal Gorman Brown is shown here in action with a student. 

***

By Reform Sasscer Staff:

ACLU of Maryland has highlighted a suspicious agenda which is currently being rolled out by our current Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. The civil rights organization is calling Maryland Governor’s actions as “unacceptable”.

The Maryland Governor Hogan is pushing to spend millions more on the “BOOST” voucher program for students to attend private schools, most with religious curriculums, discriminate against students, especially LGBTQ students and students with disabilities.

Without proper accountability in place for public and private schools, the millions of dollars being disbursed to private school is clearly being siphoned off as part of an organized scheme.

Tell your state legislators to end Maryland’s voucher program for private and religious schools program ASAP.  The public corruption in Maryland Schools is out of control and there is currently no proper accountability of public funds.

current Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is accused of pushing to spend millions more on the “BOOST” voucher program for students to attend private schools, most with religious curriculums, discriminate against students, especially LGBTQ students and students with disabilities.

***

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan delivers remarks at his inauguration ceremony, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019, in Annapolis, Md. Hogan is the first Republican governor to be re-elected in the state since the 1950s. However, many watchers believe that, he won fraudulently after voter suppression in Prince George’s County and elsewhere. Keen watchers are predicting he will have a rough second term and might even be impeached from office.  (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

By Kate Ryan

ANNAPOLIS— Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is vowing to keep the start date for the state’s schools after the Labor Day holiday.

In a news conference in Annapolis, the governor called criticism of his 2016 executive order that mandated all schools start after Labor Day “fabricated nonsense” generated by “special interests,” and he promised to fight bills to reverse the order.

“Sadly, this commonsense action is now being threatened by out-of-touch politicians and paid political operatives,” Hogan said.

Hogan said having schools start after Labor Day had been debated in the past — with strong support for the change, and cited a poll that said nearly 70 percent of Marylanders supported the later start date.

“We’ve taken a lot of actions over the past four years, but I can’t think of any action that has as much widespread, enthusiastic support as this one does,” he told reporters.

If the bill to reverse his order is passed and schools are given the ability to open before Labor Day, the governor said he’s prepared to take a number of actions. First, he said he would submit legislation to codify his 2016 executive order into statute.

Hogan also said that would include requiring any local school system looking to change the start date to put the question to a referendum within that jurisdiction.

Hogan warned: “I just want to be on record saying that I assure you that any school board that actually attempts to subvert the will of the people in that jurisdiction — those hearings are going to be packed with people who will be letting the local school board know how they feel about trying to make that change.”

Finally, Hogan said if lawmakers move ahead with their plan, he would move to put the question to a statewide referendum. In that case, he said: “There will be a petition to referendum. They will gather the required signatures from one corner of the state to the other. It will be placed on the ballot, and there is a 100 percent chance that the voters will overturn any action by the legislature with a more than 70 percent vote and school after Labor Day will remain the law in this state.”

Outside the House chambers, Del. David Moon, said given other pressing issues facing lawmakers, from health care to employment issues, he found it surprising that Hogan would put such emphasis on the school calendar bill.

“The idea that he would go and try to gather signatures on the issue of having school start after Labor Day — I mean that’s the definition of misplaced priorities,” Moon said.

Del. Vaughn Stewart said, “local jurisdictions should be able to decide local issues like local school calendars.”

Hogan said the current law allows schools to set their own academic calendars; it just requires that schools start after Labor Day.

Del. Eric Leudtke said, “I think there is interest statewide in making this a local decision,” and he insisted that the change would not affect school systems where the later start date is favored. “

“If school systems on the shore want to start after Labor Day, that’s great,” he said.

He also noted that many school systems schedule days off that are unique to their jurisdictions. He mentioned Frederick County’s decision to give students time off during the Great Frederick Fair.

“They do things like that all over the state but it should be a local decision,” he added.

Leudtke also said that school systems — such as Montgomery County — where an earlier school start date was in place before 2016, wanted to start before Labor Day to ensure more instructional time to children, many of whom face economic and social disadvantages.

“Longer summers disproportionately hurt students of low income,” Leudtke said. “We know that a longer summer means middle-class families in Maryland have had to pay more for summer day care.”

Hogan dismissed objections that suggest a later school start date hurts students, saying “All of that of course, is completely fabricated nonsense.”

During floor debate on the bill to reverse Hogan’s 2016 executive order, Senate President Mike Miller said he had favored the move to push the school start date to after Labor Day. But noting that Maryland’s education rankings had fallen in recent years — Maryland’s schools rank eighth in the nation according to a 2018 Quality Counts report — Miller said he’s changed his mind.

“Times change, circumstances change, and there’s reasons why votes change — and this is the reason my vote is changing on this issue,” he said.

Via WTOP 

Read more >>> Unacceptable as Maryland Governor Hogan pushes to spend millions more on the “BOOST” voucher program

Senator Paul Pinsky is among the fearless leaders who are going after Governor Larry Hogan heads on. His concerns are valid and already met with parents in the Prince George’s County.

Senator Nancy King is among the fearless leaders who are going after Governor Larry Hogan heads on. Her concerns are valid following feedback from the community. 

Del. Eric Leudtke said, “I think there is interest statewide in making this a local decision,” and he insisted that the change would not affect school systems where the later start date is favored. “

***

Video of what appeared to be a fight between a principal and a student at a high school in Prince George’s County was more one-sided than that, police said. (WTOP/Michelle Basch)

By Michelle Basch 

PALMER PARK, Md.— What some people thought was a fight between a high school principal and a student Wednesday appeared to Prince George’s County police to have been more one-sided.

The incident happened at Charles Herbert Flowers High School in Springdale, Maryland, and was recorded by a student, police said. The video was circulated on social media.

“The video, when slowed down and examined critically, demonstrates that the student places his hand in the face of the principal. What is viewed by some to be a blow, we believe is actually the principal swiping the hand away,” said police chief Hank Stawinski.

After that, the chief said the student can be seen hitting the principal.

A school resource officer, who is a county police officer, saw what happened and used a pepper spray foam to subdue the student, Stawinski said.

“I know my parents worry about these things and I worry about them too. This is not going to contaminate the entire hallway, because it’s a foam. It’s like shaving cream. It goes where it goes, and that’s the only person who gets impacted by it,” the chief said, adding that at this point he believes the school resource officer acted appropriately.

Police use the foam in schools, as well as at FedEx Field, to ensure bystanders are not accidentally affected, Stawinski said.

Stawinski said the student, who has been charged with assault, was involved in several confrontations with school staff that day.

The principal has been placed on administrative leave until things can be sorted out.

Stawinski said both his department and the school are conducting investigations to look further into the actions of the principal and student.

He said one of the things they’ll be looking at is video from school surveillance cameras.

Via WTOP

Read more >>>

Metro Schools Director Dr. Shawn Joseph and former PGCPS Executive currently in Nashville Tennessee, began talks with a Utah-based technology company about a potential no-bid contract two weeks before he formally took command of the Nashville school system, emails uncovered by the press reveal.

By: Phil Williams

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF)— Metro Schools Director Dr. Shawn Joseph began talks with a Utah-based technology company about a potential no-bid contract two weeks before he formally took command of the Nashville school system, emails uncovered by NewsChannel 5 Investigates reveal.

The emails, obtained through the Tennessee Public Records Act, show that Performance Matters had discussions with Joseph about how to “extend our partnership,” suggesting the company’s contract with Shelby County schools could be a “purchasing vehicle” for Metro Nashville Public Schools.

That process, known as “piggybacking,” allows companies to get government contracts without having to compete with other vendors.

“We may be able to discuss a pilot this year [if] the costs are right!” Joseph said in a follow-up email two weeks after he became director of schools.

Instead, less than six months into Joseph’s tenure, MNPS signed two no-bid contracts with Performance Matters, totaling $1.8 millon.

As a result of questions raised by NewsChannel 5 Investigates, the district admitted this week that it broke state law in awarding a $1 million, no-bid contract with Performance Matters for a student assessment platorm, piggybacking on a contract with Orange County, Florida, schools.

State law only allows piggybacking on in-state contracts.

The district signed a second, $845,000 contract with the company that was piggybacked on the Shelby County contract, although Metro changed the terms. Experts say that also violates state law.

Joseph was hired in mid-May 2016. He formally went to work July 1, although he did visit Nashville for an estimated 10 days to prepare for the job.

In a written statement, Metro Schools suggested that the Performance Matters contracts originated in 2016 after “a transition team made up of local, state and national experts shared that Nashville needed to focus on student achievement – with a sense of urgency.”

Joseph’s transition team did not release its final report until February 2017.

But the emails suggest that Joseph and Performance Matters executive Amy Wieland first talked on June 13, 2016 – a month after he was hired, but two weeks before he formally went to work.

Joseph proposed a discussion about “how we can best support teachers using quality formative assessments and quality unit assessments aligned to Tennessee standards.”

“We’d also be interested in high quality PD [professional development] just focused on literacy,” Joseph said in an email to Wieland. “We don’t need everything… just on-line PD to support high quality literacy instruction.”

The incoming schools director promised to check to see what Shelby County had done.

Wieland connected Joseph with Roderick “Rocky” Sams, the company’s director of education solutions.

“As we look at how we can extend our partnership to include your current vision for MNPS, I’ve attached a copy of the recent Shelby County RFP we were just awarded for your review,” Sams said in a July 5, 2016, email to Joseph.

“It includes a “piggyback” clause … on page 5 that would allow districts to use as a purchasing vehicle.”

Joseph responded on July 18, 2016, saying: “Excellent.”

“I need to get my bearings,” the Metro Schools director continued. “We have data systems. I need to look at them and see if there is a need to enhance. If I make changes, it will be next year.”

As NewsChannel 5 Investigates previously reported, Sams was inside MNPS offices just six weeks into Joseph’s tenure, making a pitch for Performance Matters’ products.

Talk of a “pilot” project quickly developed into the $1.8 million contracts.

Joseph had previously appeared in a promotional video for Performance Matters, touting how the company’s student assessment software had been utilized in his previous job in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He was also a keynote speaker at the company’s 2014 conference.

In response to NewsChannel 5’s questions, Joseph provided the following explanation of his relationship with Performance Matters:

“I presented at a Performance Matters Conference. The presentation was based upon a chapter in my book, The Principal’s Guide to the First 100 Days of the School Year. Performance Matters reimbursed me for my travel and accommodations for my keynote. They did not assess me a registration fee for the conference. I signed copies of my book at the event.

“I used Performance Matters as a principal in Montgomery County Public Schools. My teachers and I used the tool to dramatically improve instruction at my school. We did not use Performance Matters when I was the superintendent of Seaford Delaware. When was Deputy Superintendent in Prince George’s County Public Schools, Prince George’s County Public Schools had already had Performance Matters as a district PD and assessment platform. I was asked to do a promotional video as a result of principals and teachers in Prince George’s County using the tool to improve instruction in their schools. The school district approved me being on the video because it focused on the success of schools in Prince George’s County using the tool. I was not paid for the promotional video.”

Via News channel 5 Nashville 

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Senator Cory Booker is seen here speaking to a voter in Silver Spring in a Past photo.

The Democratic party is discovering that unions – which have greatly shrunken due to the attacks by right-wingers like Scott Walker and Rick Snyder – are part of their base. Union corruption in United States is real. Something needs to be done. Big labor is currently colluding with the politicians across the party lines to derail democracy in many ways. Democratic party is also discovering that school privatization is not an issue that belongs in the Democratic toolkit alone.

The 2020 candidate with the biggest school choice problem, writes Ed Kilgore at New York magazine, is Cory Booker. 

Kilgore writes that Booker

might be able to explain away his reputation for being a reliable friend of Wall Street as a matter of virtual constituent services given the financial industry’s importance to New Jersey and to the city of Newark where he served as mayor for seven years. But a more concrete problem involves his long history of support for any and every kind of school choice, including not just the charter public schools the Clinton and Obama administrations supported, but the private-school vouchers that most Democrats stridently oppose. What makes this history a fresh concern is the fact that Booker was once a close ally of the DeVos family, the Michigan gazillionaires and education privatization champions who gave the world Donald Trump’s secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Kara Voght has the story:

In 1999, when he was still a city councilman, Booker worked with a conservative financier and a New Jersey Republican mayor to co-found Excellent Education for Everyone, a group dedicated to establishing a school voucher program in the Garden State. The following year, Dick DeVos—the Republican megadonor, school choice evangelist, and husband to the nation’s 11th education secretary—invited the 31-year-old Newark councilman up to his home base of Grand Rapids, Michigan, to speak in defense of a ballot measure that would lift the state’s ban on school voucher programs …

Booker’s association with the DeVos couple continued as he progressed from City Council to Newark’s mayoral seat in 2006 to the US Senate in 2013. In the mid-2000s, Booker and DeVos served together on the board of directors of Alliance for School Choice (AFC), the precursor to the American Federation for Children, which DeVos eventually chaired. Booker twice spoke at the AFC’s annual School Choice Policy Summit: once in 2012 as a mayor and again in 2016 as a senator.

Let us be clear here. Booker’s support for charters and vouchers is unacceptable to many of us trying to reform the public schools in the United States. Many of us are education voters. Booker is unacceptable in several ways because he will protect Wall Street and others supporting school choice such as the Waltons and the Koch brothers. However, he is free to contest the highest seat in the land and convince the voters and others interested in better outcomes of the schools. The issues involved  as pertains to the public corruption in charter schools should not be taken lightly especially in Maryland.

Union corruption is real. Something needs to be done. Big labor is currently colluding with the politicians across the party lines to derail democracy.

Union corruption is real. Something needs to be done. Big labor is currently colluding with the politicians across the party lines to derail democracy.

Uncontrolled corruption in charter schools is destroying America’s public schools.

Corruption in American charter schools has become a license to steal.

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In this post, a parent activist in Northern California succinctly described the case against charter schools.

Charter schools take resources away from the public schools, harming public schools and their students. All charter schools do this – whether they’re opportunistic and for-profit or presenting themselves as public, progressive and enlightened.

Charter schools are free to pick and choose and exclude or kick out any student they want. They’re not supposed to, but in real life there’s no enforcement. Many impose demanding application processes, or use mandatory “intake counseling,” or require work hours or financial donations from families – so that only the children of motivated, supportive, compliant families get in. Charter schools publicly deny this, but within many charter schools, the selectivity is well known and viewed as a benefit. Admittedly, families in those schools like that feature – with the more challenging students kept out of the charter – but it’s not fair or honest, and it harms public schools and their students.

Charter schools are often forced into school districts against the districts’ will. School boards’ ability to reject a charter application is limited by law; and if a school board rejects a charter application, the applicant can appeal to the county board of education and the California state board of education. Then the school district winds up with a charter forced upon it, taking resources from the existing public schools. Often this means the district must close a public school.

Anyone can apply to open and operate a charter school, and get public funding for it. The process is designed to work in their favor. They don’t have to have to be educators or show that they’re competent or honest. They may be well-meaning but unqualified and incompetent, or they may be crooks. Imagine allowing this with police stations, fire stations, public bus systems or parks.

Part of a school district’s job is to provide the right number of schools to serve the number of students in the district. When charter schools are forced into the district, that often requires existing public schools to close. Again, that harms the district and its students.

California law (Prop. 39) requires school districts to provide space for charter schools, even if the district didn’t want the charter. Charter schools are often forced into existing public schools (this is called co-location), taking space and amenities away from their students and creating conflict. This is a contentious issue in other states too.

Charter schools can be opened by almost anyone and get little oversight, so they’re ripe for corruption, looting, nepotism, fraud and self-dealing. Corruption happens in public school districts too, but charter schools offer an extra tempting opportunity for crooks, and the history of charters in California and nationwide shows that wrongdoers often grab that opportunity.

Charter schools, backed by billionaire-funded pro-privatization support and PR machinery, have positioned themselves as an enemy to school districts, public schools and teachers, sending their damaging message to politicians and the media. These charter backers pour millions into electing charter-friendly candidates. Tearing down our public school system and our teachers, as the charter sector does endlessly, harms our public schools and their students.

The charter sector tends to sort itself into two kinds of schools. Charter schools serving low-income students of color often impose military-style discipline and rigid rules – hands folded on the desk, eyes tracking the speaker, punishment for tiny dress code violations, a focus on public humiliation. By contrast, some charter schools serving children of privilege are designed to isolate the school from a district so that lower-income kids aren’t assigned to the school. Charter schools overall have been found to increase school segregation.

Charter schools overall serve far fewer children with disabilities and English-language learners than public schools. Even those designed to serve children with disabilities serve far fewer children with the types of disabilities that are most challenging and expensive to work with, such as children with severe autism or who are severely emotionally disturbed.

Despite the many advantages charter schools enjoy, they don’t do any better overall than public schools. The rallying cry for charter schools used to be that the “competition” would improve public schools, but that hasn’t happened. In charter schools’ more than 20 years of existence, they haven’t overall brought better education to impoverished communities.

*Note: This commentary applies to California charter schools and California charter laws. Many of the issues apply to charter schools in most or all other states where they exist.

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