The Ten

1.What do I tell confused parents when an F in the grade book magically becomes a nothing of  its own volition? Sorry sir, guess we don't give that grade any longer, not until the end of the  year anyway, when it is too late to do anything about it? 2. I’ve had to meet with my child’s counselor twice  this year to fix an erroneous grade and a  mis-calculation of his GPA." Parent Question of Junior at TCW: Is the above question on errors  in Academic Access being looked into? We've noted similar problems. GPA errors in light of  college applications are inexcusable. 3.What is your strategy for motivating and  retaining talented, experienced, good teachers  who are genuinely dedicated to the profession  and the children? Because what I've seen and  read about what has been done in ACPS in the  last couple of years are demoralizing and enough  cause to drive good teachers with brains and talent and creativity to RUN out of ACPS! Is it your  master plan to acquire and retain only yes men  and zombie drones responding only to your  commands, Sherman? 4.What meetings are so important that requires  teachers and principals to be out of school  so frequently? How is a school supposed to function  with a third of its team and leadership  missing? If the teachers already hired aren't good enough to teach (one conclusion people can  draw from all the required training), how are subs supposed to pull it off? By Anonymous on Dr. Sherman...Coming to the Underground on 3/23/11 5.Who was responsible for not scheduling Hammond  students until after the school year  started and did that person lose their job? By Anonymous on Dr. Sherman...Coming to the Underground on 3/23/11 6.In her excellent book (often touted by Dr. Sherman),  The Death and Life of the Great American  School System, Diane Ravitch writes at length about  the pitfalls of breaking larger campuses into  smaller "learning communities". (It sounds good, doesn't it?) All of the dismal problems  documented in her book mirror the disasters we are currently observing in our middle schools.  Why do we perpetuate the myth that 5 schools (with 10 administrators) are better than  2 schools, and why are we repeating the costly mistakes of those school systems who have  already tried this costly, failing, strategy? By Anonymous on Dr. Sherman...Coming to the Underground on 3/23/11 7.How do you know whether consultants engaged to deliver professional development to  ACPS teachers know more about how to teach ACPS students than ACPS teachers do? By Anonymous on Dr. Sherman...Coming to the Underground on 3/23/11 8.My question deals with IB, specifically MYP. I have worked in a MYP school and our  instructional collaboration was done via teams, meaning the traditional MS teams.  Our teams were disbanded when the 2 schools became 5; realistically how can we  effectively plan (create collaborative lessons) without those teams? By Anonymous on Dr. Sherman...Coming to the Underground on 3/23/11 9.Dear Sup. Morton Sherman, can you please explain to me, the parent of an ACPS student,  how my child is benefiting from his teacher being away from the classroom almost 30% of the  teaching time, since the beginning of this school year, for mandatory meetings, trainings and  other ‘development’ activities? How is my child benefiting from being ‘taught’ by a substitute  most of that time, and if he’s lucky, the substitute speaks English? 10.new hires were mandated to attend training/orientation without compensation,  employees are required to tutor and attend meetings for free, your consultants don't work  for free, why should I? By Anonymous on Dr. Sherman...Coming to the Underground on 3/23/11 And the big bonus!! 1) If we have a surplus here in Alexandria then why do teachers overwhelmingly have to pay  their own way for courses for their own recertification? When I started teaching here ACPS  paid half and my department paid the other half. Now we get next to nothing. Unlike  administrators the vast majority of us are not rich, nor do we see the rationale behind  paying to keep our jobs. What we paid Skillful Teacher could have paid for college courses  for dozens of teachers. Now I understand you could get college credit for ST but you had  to pony up 200 bucks of your own money for credits that will never transfer from a university  I would be ashamed to attend (one step above "go to college in your pajamas!").  2) Why is it that kids can walk right off a school bus and onto king street in the morning  and nobody stops them? Seriously, nobody even tries. It's almost as if we tacitly encourage  truancy. 3) Why are the hall monitors allowed to do absolutely nothing? Why do numerous  (talkingdozens) of complaints not result in any discipline? Why are hall monitors taking kids  out of my class to talk about sports? Why are they allowed to openly abandon their posts?  Why are they allowed to be surly and unprofessional? In short: why are hall monitors not  fired for things teachers would be? 3) Mort said proudly that no teacher took a pay cut  because of the recession (during which we apparently collected a surplus). Every CTE  teacher got 10 days cut from their work calendar. They said it was because of the  recession when I asked. That's a pay cut for about 5-10% of the staff. How does that  not count? We ever getting those days back or is central office hoping we'll shut up and  take it? Until then I would appreciate if the superintendent did not say anything about  people not taking a pay cut due to the recession. 4) Why is the superintendent not willing  to pay staff for the extra time at the same rate they get paid every other hour of the day?  It's like we have to work one half hour a day at a huge discount. I respectfully ask that we  stop treating the education business as a charity and start treating it as a job. In short we  have a proposed 2-3% pay increase for a proposed 6-7% work increase. Makes no sense  unless you think we aren't worth the money. Maybe we should get on a bus to Fairfax?  5) It was said before but I reiterate: How did the focus vis a vis extra time go from student  time to extra time for staff development? Remember this email TC staff? "The state has  strongly recommended, as part of our PLA designation, to increase annual instructional  time by 300 hours. My proposals bring us very close to that goal." - Morton Sherman Says  "student instruction" pretty clearly. Now we're told it will be PLP time (utter waste of time,  I swear ACPS LOVES bureaucracy). What changed Mort? The plan is clearly different now  than it was initially and no reason was given. In fact, I believe this issue has not been  addressed at all. I'm hoping Mort comes clean and does not make this into a BS case about  semantics (see, that I meant by student instruction was...). I charge Mort with moving the  goalposts. By Anonymous on Dr. Sherman...Coming to the Underground at 3:13 PM Thank you, Dr. Sherman, we await your responses.