DeeDee Fisher is the proud parent of a senior graduating from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, who will be headed to the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts in the fall.
Fisher said she would happily rank her daughter’s education with that of any student at one of the D.C. area’s private schools.
“She had friends from her junior high who went to private schools, and her experience of high school was better than theirs — like hands down,” Fisher said.
From the academics offered to the extracurricular activities, she said, the opportunities at Montgomery County Public Schools are second to none.
“Any class you want to take, any club you want to be in, any activity you want to do,” Fisher said of the school system. “And the support structure to get the grades while doing it” is built into the school’s offerings.
Her pride in her daughter’s education is the kind of parental feedback the school system loves to hear. But Fisher said she has a message for the Board of Education: don’t go through with the staff cuts proposed at the May 21 school board meeting.
At the meeting last week, the Board of Education discussed Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s proposal to eliminate more than 400 positions — some of which are vacant — in order to cut the operating budget. The move comes after the Montgomery County Council approved a budget that fell $36 million short of the budget request from the school system.
Among the positions included in potential cuts are college and career navigators, social workers and family engagement specialists.
Fisher said cutting those positions that have an impact on student life would be detrimental, and not just to a student’s emotional well-being.
Fisher said students in Montgomery County Public Schools choose challenging courses.
“They choose to do that work, but they choose it knowing that they have the structure to support them,” she said.
That support, Fisher said, goes a long way toward helping students manage demanding courseloads and handle pressures outside the classroom.
Thanks to the attention and services available, students “end up getting into these amazing colleges, and Montgomery County gets to tout the fact that they get in,” Fisher said.
But if the school system cuts staff that provide those services that improve students’ well-being, Fisher said she believes, “those numbers are going to change.”
She pointed to attendance at events tied to student well-being at Whitman. Parents support those programs through the “Stressbusters” events at the school.
“I can speak from first-person experience that we had hundreds of kids show up for events. If you do it at lunch, kids show up,” Fisher said. “Because they want the help so much. And they know they need it.”
Fisher said even though her daughter’s time in Montgomery County Public Schools has come to a close, as a parent, she will contact the school board to try to prevent cuts in areas that affect counseling, social work, and college and career placement.
When the Board of Education meets to hold a vote on the budget plan, Fisher said, they can expect to see parents there.
“I would predict it’s going to be a packed meeting with lots of requests to speak,” Fisher said. “The generals have to listen to the soldiers. … The soldiers include the parents and the kids.”
The cuts are needed, Superintendent Taylor said, because the Montgomery County Council approved a budget that failed to fully fund the school system’s budget request, leaving the school system with $36 million less than it asked for.
The Board of Education will meet June 4 to consider the superintendent’s budget proposal — including the staffing reductions.
Taylor said when the county council released its budget plan, his response would try to “keep reductions as far away from the classroom as possible.”
But, he added at the time, “Our choices are awful.”
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