School Administrators – DC Metro Schools are a Shitshow
Since Covid, a lot of school districts are suffering. Kids have fallen behind. Teachers are burned out. Let’s look at the year in review 2022 for DC Area Schools and see what’s going on.
Let’s Start this Party in DC
For the whole year, reports coming out of schools everywhere that teachers are quitting without notice and that the substitutes they are finding seem to be, uh, questionable. DC is no exception.
In the spring, the middle school in Glover Park / Georgetown had 28 teachers call in sick on the same day. This is when covid rates were rising and DCPS was too stupid to call the school year and let everyone be done. Kids were dropping like flies. They didn’t have enough subs to fill the open spots so they just piled the kids in the gym and let them hang out there.
Another Elementary School in Chevy Chase, a long time darling of the Elementary School Lineup in DC, can’t seem to keep their teachers. The turnover has been consistent over the past several years – even pre-covid, with up to double digits leaving per year.
In the fall, another Elementary School sent students on a sweet little trip to a farm for the Fall Pumpkin Festival, something most of the schools do. On the way home, their bus crashed. The bus driver was drunk. The adults on the bus asked him to pull over. Police came and he blew a point D-R-U-N-K. A new bus was called and that driver wasn’t properly licensed. Then a third driver was also called and he too didn’t have the proper license. DC “terminated” the relationship with the bus company.
This isn’t enough, you morons. This kind of stuff happens on DCPS watches all the time.
Contracted school bus driver charged with DWI after crash with DCPS students
Next, In November, The Department of General Services, or DGS, the agency responsible for maintenance and repairs to DC Public School buildings had an audit report released. The report revealed “multiple failures” in the way DGS manages work orders, according to a report from the city’s auditor.
Do the classroom doors lock in the event of an incident, aka “active shooter?” Well, two months after the shooting in Uvalde, the DC Council voted to require schools to report how many doors locked and the status of Heating/Air Conditioning Systems. Mayor Bowser was against this by the way, she thought that DGS was already publishing the HVAC Repair Requests. So what, Muriel? Now that we have the audit report, it shows that a lot of the info they provided was basically a lie – using stock images from the internet as proof that something in a school was fixed. Imagine if we all lied like that in our jobs.
Does your DC Public School have mice? Rats? Mold? You’re probably on your own. You as parents can band together and fix this yourselves and await the wrath of DGS, or you can keep sending your kid to an unsafe, unsanitary school. Your choice.
In case you’re still wondering how competent DGS is, also in November, the Department of General Services sent some of their people to my children’s elementary school to work on something. They ended up hitting the “lockdown” button, sending the entire school into closets, hopefully with doors that locked. For 15 minutes the kids thought there was an active shooter in the school. Good job DGS!
Multiple Failures in Department of General Services Management of Work Orders
Also in November, the fall was very busy by the way, the Dean of Students Jamie White of Bancroft Elementary School in Mount Pleasant? Arrested for shaking his junk at some people in a park.
Dean of students at DC school arrested for indecent exposure incidents in Greenbelt
Virginia
In 2021, a 15 year old male entered a bathroom and raped a female student in Loudoun County. School officials transferred him to another high school. Oops he does it again. When asked by the School Board, Superintendent Scott Ziegler lied and said no such assault had occurred. Teachers had reported the disturbing behavior of this student. You know those billboards on the highway that say, “When you see something, SAY something?” Well, they did. A teaching assistant at the first high school put this on a written record. No one bothered to follow up.
After Assault #1, Principal of the first high school calls Principal of the second high school to fill them in on the sexual assault charge. Principal #2 asked no questions and told no one at the school anything. After new problems at the second school, reported by students and teachers as inappropriate touching, the Principal went with a verbal warning.
Ultimately, for what transpired on his watch and for how he mishandled it, the Superintendent was terminated in December.
Superintendent Scott Ziegler fired after parents complain to Loudoun County School Board
Safe Schools Information Resource (SSIR)
Over in the City of Alexandria, they just finished a chaotic 4 year run of a Superintendent who wasn’t the most loved, shall we say. In addition to families feeling shut out of school decisions, there was also the incident with a student being killed (not on school grounds) and the Superintendent emailing the School Board to tell them to refrain from speaking with the media.
Superintendent tells School Board to not talk to media about fatal stabbing of student
Maryland
Let’s head to Maryland now. In Montgomery County, in the end of 2021 there were two stabbings at two different high schools and then a January shooting at a 3rd high school. MCPS didn’t follow the procedure, unveiled in 2020 to report within 24 hours to the Maryland Center for School Safety and then file a report with the Governor within 60 days. Did this happen? Nope. They didn’t know the law changed in 2020.
The school system also removed the security officers from the school and they were supposed to replace them with more Social Workers, but the attorney for the family of the boy who was shot says that didn’t happen.
These are our schools, people. It’s not just a DC Problem but dangerous and disastrous events seem to be more common than ever before. Guns and other weapons are easy to get. School administration isn’t good at following procedures. I don’t know how we fix it other than staying involved and supporting the teachers and your local schools as best as you can.
MCPS explains why it failed to properly report school shooting and stabbings
