A Friend of Education

This is me yesterday afternoon, turning in a completed nomination packet for the Howard County Friends of Education Award. Here is a small part of what this packet contained:

I nominate Vicky Comer Cutromeo to receive the Friends of Education Award. As the parent of a student at Glenwood Middle School, she became concerned by continuing reports of staff and student illness. Despite being an active volunteer and supporter in the school community, she found she was unable to get the information she needed about conditions in the school and health issues connected to untreated mold growth at Glenwood.

She founded the Mold in Howard County Schools - Information for Parents Facebook group as a means of creating a clearinghouse of information to help parents, students, teachers, and staff around this issue.

Goal 1 -- concerns an excellent environment for students. Ms. Cutroneo has worked daily to uncover the connection between unhealthy building conditions and ongoing student illness. Sick children cannot thrive and learn.

Goal 2 -- concerns staff and supporting them so they may be successful. Ms. Cutroneo has served as a sounding board for faculty and staff seeking information about conditions in their schools and chronic health concerns which impair them as they seek to support students at the highest levels. Sick teachers and staff cannot thrive and provide the educational leadership required by Goal 1.

Goal 3 -- concerns working cooperatively with families. Ms. Cutroneo has created an online community for parents to share concerns, gather evidence, and connect with other parents whose children have become ill due to mold. Her Facebook group is a safe place for parents to express themselves and be listened to. She has treated parents with the respect they deserve as partners in the education of their children.

Goal 4 -- concerns supporting schools through world class practices. Ms. Cutromeo has campaigned tirelessly to advocate for Transparency and Responsiveness in our school system. She has gathered and analyzed a mountain of evidence to show that, where school buildings have been allowed to fall into disrepair, a world class education is not possible. She is a champion for improved maintenance of the school buildings where our children, our most valuable community assets, spend their days.

*****

I cannot claim to have thought up this plan of action by myself. The idea was posted on Howard Public Ed and it immediately struck me as brilliant. So, I ran with it.

With things being the way they are these days, it seems highly unlikely that hcpss will bestow this award upon Ms. Cutromeo. In fact, I doubt they'll even go so far as to give her a ceremonial bookmark for participation. But that's okay. She's really busy embarking on her next community service project.

She's running for the Board of Education.

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog