Skip to main content

Who Stole the Cookies?

If you were listening very carefully to the recent testimony of Colleen Morris, HCEA President, you just might have caught the answer to today’s 64 dollar question. The question?



The answer: https://youtu.be/E5ygmTTLQAA

That perennially “leaky” Health and Dental Fund? It didn’t just spring a leak all by itself. It was raided to fund other, completely unrelated projects.

Is that even legal?

That money is specifically dedicated to Howard County teachers. Please tell me that our school system doesn’t decide to bankroll unfunded pet projects by sticking their hand in someone else’s cookie jar. Any of us who handle our own personal/family budgets know that robbing Peter to pay Paul will eventually have dire consequences.

But this, my friends, is far bigger than Sister dipping into the egg money to buy new nylon stockings.

The Superintendent serves at the pleasure of the Board of Education. The Board of Education is elected by the community to serve the people of Howard County. Where was the oversight here? I recall certain former board members saying that she “is doing everything we have asked her to do.” Really?  Did you ask her to take away contractually earned Health and Dental money from teachers?

Our school system is built upon trust. As parents we entrust our children to our school system. The teachers who work with our children every day must trust that the professional and financial agreements they have entered into will be honored. Quite simply:



If this is the kind of information the forensic audit is turning up, I sure wish we had been able to do it a long time ago. Like maybe 20 million ago, before the midnight cookie jar raiding got so out of hand. Shenanigans like this go a long way towards explaining why current Superintendent Martirano is #NotHappy .

One last thought: some of us still haven’t gotten over the sting of the former Superintendent publicly suggesting the teachers could be thought of as “greedy” for asking that the school system honor already agreed upon raises. That she could say that while knowing that she was draining their Health and Dental Fund makes it all the more offensive.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...