Failure By Inaction Will Not Be Acceptable

In Tuesday's school board meeting, several board members and the superintendent commented after the announcement that they were giving the anti-MCPS groups two more weeks to apply for the new committee. It started when board President Pat O'Neill called on board member Steve Abrams:

PO: All right, Mr. Abrams.

SA: Specifically I want to reference the comments that were made by Michelle Turner this morning. In conjunction with the correspondence that Mrs. O' Neill has stated, I think from my perspective, I think we want to make this thing work right and we want to make sure that the focus of this advisory committee gets to the task of providing us with insights onto an appropriate curriculum to be implemented during the second semester of this school year. Very fortunately, we have a little bit of time but not a great deal of time.

So I would certainly urge the three groups to take the opportunity they have to prefect their applications to the process. It should be quite clear to them what the process is, what the qualifications are, what the expectations are. I'm hopeful that we will be able to go forward and see a full advisory committee appointed on the 24th but certainly that decision rests on the applicants.

This struck me as a positive comment. Abrams is a Republican, a conservative, and he plays his cards close to his chest. We never know how excited he is about the curriculum or the controversy, but he seems fair and he pays attention, and he did vote for it the last time. And here he mentioned a pretty ambitious but perfectly reasonable plan to get the curriculum up and running for the Spring semester. He doesn't want to waste time, he wants to get this thing off his desk, up and running, and that's what we want, too.

Then board member Sharon Cox spoke up:

S. Cox: Just a point of information. I thought I heard Mr. Abrams say "the curriculum to be implemented in the Second semester of this school year" and the green sheet that we originally passed said that the recommendation would be brought to the Board by the end of the school year but it did not, you know, with training issues, etc., it may not be implemented in the second semester. (CROSS TALK) I just didn't want to set, create an expectation to the public.

Ah, the public. We do have an expectation, actually. We expect our kids to get a first rate education in Montgomery County public schools.

Abrams clarifies:

S.Abrams: I appreciate that. I didn't mean to misspeak but clearly when we deferred last years, we deferred the portion of the curriculum that would normally be given towards the latter part of the second semester. Ideally, we would certainly like to see something if ready.

This interlude of spontaneous discussion ended with a pessimistic, even fatalistic, summary by Superintendent Weast:

Dr. Weast: Yeah. I think it's going to be as you can see a fairly complicated process. I've talked to Jody [?] and she gave me a report this last week that she just believes that probably it's going to be very difficult to achieve that spring implementation. Now that doesn't mean that we won't have what we currently have and which has stood the test of time but she believes because of all the attention that has to be paid to each of these details, that we probably won't get that rolled out in that time frame.

In fact, she was certain that she wouldn't get it rolled out in that time frame. And I kept telling her please try but you understand.

OK, look, I don't know who Jody is, but what do you say you get somebody in there who can do this?

They've got half a year to put together two 45-minute classes -- and it's already been done once. Plan A: Throw out offensive background resources, vote on it, and go. Elapsed Time: near zero.

And if the crybabies miss the meeting ... oh well. They did have seats.

And that thing about "what we currently have and which has stood the test of time?" Did he mean that? Dr. Weast is on record saying that a new curriculum was overdue -- he said that last year, as I recall. This thing hasn't stood the test of time, it's way out of date and it needs to be replaced. Let's not get sentimental about how well the old curriculum has stood the "test of time."

We supported the board's adoption of the curriculum last year, and now we support their efforts to develop and approve another one. We will not support them if they sit around doing nothing. And we will make sure people notice.

The MCPS Board of Education just gave us two big fat weeks of Absolutely Nothing. For now, we will trust that they did this on sound legal advice, but it's still two weeks gone.

We will not agree to failure by inaction.