Like all media outlets, The Dagger has been invited to meet with the four finalists for Superintendent of Harford County Public Schools. Unlike the traditional media, we here at The Dagger would like to invite our readers to post questions below for us to pose directly to the candidates.
Sure, we’ve got some questions of our own. But why should we have all the fun?
Seriously, with the caveat that 20 minutes of unstructured time has been set aside for media interviews, the idea is that we’ll try to get as many answers as possible and post the results forthwith.
Granted, we missed the first two interview sessions with Dr. Carl Roberts and Dr. Franklin Till, Jr. (your correspondent was out of town). But the final two sessions are planned for this week. Dr. Raymond Bryant will be interviewed at 9:40 A.M. on Wednesday, May 27; Dr. Robert Tomback will be interviewed on Thursday, May 28.
Not much time, but not too late to get your questions in.
And you never know, a Dagger query posted here might trigger a follow-up from the Harford County Board of Education which, despite the fanfare over stakeholder meetings, is ultimately responsible for the selection of our next superintendent.
So DaggerReaders, if you could ask the candidates for superintendent a question, any question at all, it would be…
Did you intentionally schedule the first two meetings when the Dagger correspondent was out of town?
OK, here are a few questions I’d like to see answered:
1) What should HCPS be doing so our students meet the needs of high tech employers?
2) What should HCPS be doing to meet the educational needs of our gifted students? What did your previous district do for gifted education?
3) What should HCPS be doing to better prepare our students for college?
4) How should HCPS prepare for the many students coming into our district from Northern NJ as part of BRAC?
5) What has been your experience with “reform math” curriculums (TERC and Everyday Math)?
6) Why don’t “stakeholder” meetings involve real stakeholders?
My question would be:
Do you intend to actually listen to the parents of the students in HCPS and take into consideration their statements or are you going to just continue to ignore their complaints and/or problems?
How about…
1) Nationwide many high school graduates have to take remedial classes when they start college. Why do you think there is such a disconnect between what students are learning in high school and what they need for college?
2) Many HCPS tachers are graduates of Maryland colleges. What benefits do you see for recruiting teachers from outside of Maryland?
3) What have you done to increase teacher retention in the other districts where you have worked?
I think parents were the only stakeholders that were lumped in with the “community.” Teachers, Administrators, HCPS Personnel, and even Students got their own time with the candidates but not parents. That should tell people a whole lot about what the BOE thinks about parental input…
On the flip side of the teacher issue, what has your experience been with teachers who weren’t qualified and how did you deal with them. What about support for new teachers and do they believe in adding administrators and taking teachers out of classroom?
1) Traditionally the Route 40 schools have been segregated because of racial and socio-economic stereotypes. What will you do to provide the right attention for these students?
2) Teachers currently have the ability to transfer to other schools based on seniority. This has led to a large discrepency in the experience levels of teachers in Route 40 schools with close to 60% of the teachers having less than 4 years of experience in the classroom. How will you ensure that experienced teachers and administrators keeping in mind the firestorm that errupted the last time an administrator was attempted to be moved to a Route 40 school?
3) When it comes to budgeting, will you ask for the amount of money you need for the schools, or will you ask for more expecting to be cut?
1) How would you balance th diverse needs and desires of the many group of parents in this county?
2) Does fair mean equal? Or what do you plan to do to help ensure that children in high poverty schools recieve the educational opportunities afforded other children?
3) Do you think eligible Middle Schools should be allowed to recieve Title I funds?
Local Guy I like question 3. Particularly since the County Council seems to view the school system budget as such a burden.
Local Guy: I think an administrator from BAHS was moved to a Route 40 school recently and a vice principal from BAHS was made principal at a Route 40 school. I don’t think there was a firestorm. Maybe the new superintendent could get parents involved again in the principal selection at the schools. Years ago the PTA and parents in the school were allowed to make a “wish list” for the new principal. It didn’t mean they were getting it, but it might have helped give insight into the strengths and desires of the school community. Hasn’t happened in years … Bad personnel doesn’t just happen in Route 40 schools either and maybe the issue is that some communities have more money for tutoring than others. Edgewood Middle is getting more money for “Interventions” than all other schools combined in the county.
Glenn Jensen was moved from Bel Air Middle to a route 40 school too. No protest there.
Another one:
Do you think that districting should be done on a feeder school system (where the same population moves from numerous elementary schools to the middle-high schools) or more random districts where students can be split between elementary and middle school levels?
A lot of good questions posed already, many of which I would ask. Especially Confused’s question in post #3. Amen to that! Here are two more that come to mind:
1.) Not all students in HCPS have the desire nor the apptitude to pursue college upon graduation. What do you propose to do to meet the needs of those students?
2.) Will you encourage the Board of Education to revisit some of the poor decisions they have made in recent years….i.e. block schedule and earlier start time for high school….just to name a few?
Bringing up poor decisions from the BOE would mean not getting the job. BOE has the ultimate decision to do whatever they want and hire whom they want. Mark Wolkow was leading the charge so maybe ask who he wants. Heard him say at a BOE meeting that was televised tonight that Board decisions are going to become political and that BOE only make decisions based on facts. If he hadn’t done so much damage to the school system thinking he knows better than everyone else it might have actually been funny.
STakeholder in all fairness Edgewood MS is the counties poorest preforming school and the commitment was made to the principal when we hired him special that they would be doing this in order to keep EMS from state take over.
Thanks for some great questions so far. Please keep ’em coming.
Cdev, can you clarify # 3 in your post #7 for me?
There is a difference between bad teachers and inexperienced teachers. I’m not claiming the teachers in the Route 40 schools are bad, I’m saying they don’t have the necessary experience. When you consider the flight of teachers with experience, it is an issue that needs to be dealt with. A teacher should stay in a school for a while in order to build stability. Think about it like a renter, rental communities have much higher crime rates and instances of property neglect because the residents know they don’t have a long term commitment in the location.
Questions
1) Are you for or against school uniforms, WHY is it taking so long. their making it harder then what it needs to be. This has been going on for 2 years. It would make alot of parents lives easier. More money has gone into the power point presentation and monthly meetings then needed. Kids should wear a simple uniform of kakhis pants and their school color shirt with their mascot on it.
2) Why are we teaching are children to read and write how the word sounds. Example. pla=Play, Frendz=Friends, I was floored when I walked into my daughters kindergarten class and saw that.
3) Kindergarten is more like 1st grade. If you are teaching kindergarten to solve problems, count by 2, 5, 10, Read, Write, etc… then PRE-KINDERGARTEN should be MANDITORY not selective. My daughter came into kindergarten with no pryor schooling….No pre-k and was expected to know all kinds of things that are on a first grade level. and the majority of her class had Pre-k… Why should she be penilized for not being selected into Pre k.
It was touched on earlier, but I would like to know what each person will do to promote a working relationship with parents, students and teachers. Too many schools seem to be run as dictatorships, leaving the masses feeling uninvolved in decision making and policy.
Also, education only works with parental involvement. How will the new superintendent convince parents to shoulder the burden of education? YES, I know we pay taxes. But too often, some parents refuse to enforce the importance of education and good behavior on the homefront and expect the school system to raise their children.
Please notice I said “SOME” before writing a novel about how wrong I am.
Are there any plans for reviewing Uniforms for students within HCPS districts? It seems this issue was not that difficult in previous states we have lived in before, more specifically implemented at the local level. Is there any plan for a vote on this in the future?
Thanks
Cindy I was once told by a school board member that the reason middle schools in our county that qualify (MMS, EMS and AMS) do not recieve title 1 funds is because the county does not permit them to recieve the money instead the money is only given to elementary schools. I was told the thought process was that by putting more of the money into the ES with greater poverty rates it could have a bigger impact. I think you run into a problem because those middle schools still have the poverty problem and none of the solutions availible to it.
Besides the school system itself and its associated programs, Parks & Recreation uses the schools more than any other non school group for its various leisure programs. This quid pro quo relationship is the result of a Joint Use Agreement Contract between the two agencies. What has been your past experience in other jurisdictions working with Parks & Recreation organizations and how do you feel about this use of the schools by another agency?
1. What are your personal feelings and experience with block scheduling and creating uniformity throughout the whole county as compared to more school based decisions?
2. Can we please just get rid of the LICW class?
3. What is your view of including a half semester or somehow including a study hall?
We all know that Mr. Wolkow alone will choose the superintendent; because the board has not yet learned from the embarrassment that he causes them when he leads them around by the nose. A good example is his inept, failed campaign to fight the elected school board initiative, wherein he put forth one egregious misrepresentation after another (the good thing is that his arrogance and illogic turned more people against appointments and towards elections). Another example is when he bamboozled the board into an utterly audacious request of the governor to veto the blended school board bill, after the people’s representatives unanimously supported it. That was a disgrace, and another failure.
So my questions are:
– How beholden will you feel to Mr. Wolkow for giving you your job?
– Will you, unlike our last superintendent, be open and collaborative with all the stakeholders? There are some excellent teachers and principals in HCPS; they need to be heard without fear of reprisal. And the non-sychophants need to advance.
– What are some of the strategies that you would employ to eliminate the well-founded mistrust that so many have for the administration and board?
– Do you plan to perform an open-minded and realistic assessment of the Executive Director of Secondary Education’s performance.
– Speaking of the director of secondary education…. what is your opinion of LICW?Do you see it as the waste of time and farce that it is?
What do you think about forcing high school students to build their schedules around career paths when many students have no idea about which careers they will be pursuing, as opposed to general college prep studies, which allow students to experience a variety of academic disciplines prior to concentrating on a focused area?
(After reading that incredibly long sentence, I realized that it is extremely biased, but so am I)
Parent, Taxpayer and Businessman–your questions are toooo hard.
“Not From Here’: You may be right. But let us have faith.
To Phil Dirt,
Oh do I agree with you. THEY have the students pick that career choice in 8th grade. That program/completer non sense make it almos impossible to fit in two years of a foreign language and take band/chorus etc if a child excelled in that in ES or MS.
LICW is a TOTAL waste of time and money. It is supposed to be a Social Studies class but my child’s teacher last year was an English teacher. Eliminate it and give the HS students time for more important classes
The real question is whether Mr. Hess will appoint the best candidate or will follow Mr. Boniface’s lead and appoint someone from the good old boy network (like Billy did recently on the Council) to be Superintendent. I have heard that Mr. Hess may run for President of the Harford County Council. This appointment will show whether Mr. Hess has the leadership qualities to appoint the best candidate to run the HCPS or whether he will appoint someone that he (and the rest of the Board) can control.
Let’s get someone that has the vision and ability to lead our school system out of the past and into the future. I urge Mr. Hess to carefully consider this selection and select the best qualified person for the job.
But were these 4 candidates THE BEST choices? I was completely underwhelmed after reading their resumes. Of the 16 candidates proposed, were these really the best, or the least likely to make waves?
Phil & Cathy, I concur that the pathway/completer requirement amounts to nothing more than a game. It makes absolutely no sense at such a young age. While the concept of structuring toward a child’s gifts is good conceptually, it’s poor in practicality.
I agree with PMS Mom that these four candidates are underwhelming. And, is it just me, or should the HCBOE institute some sort of “Rooney Rule?”
Four old, white guys is the best we could come up with? Where is the minority representation?