Top Stories: April 2024

By Adam Pagnucco.

Below are the top ten stories on Montgomery Perspective in April 2024, ranked by page views.

1. Northwood High School Students to Walk Out Tomorrow

2. MCPS’s Shocking Performance on College and Career Readiness

3. Outrage Builds at Montgomery College Israel Movie Screening

4. Judge Orders MCPS to Surrender Document Treasure Trove

5. Occupation of the American Mind Scheduled for Screening at Montgomery College

6. Elrich’s Structural Deficit

7. MCPS’s Crisis Management Contractor

8. Jewish Group Files Federal Complaint Against MCPS for Antisemitism

9. Five Police Trends

10. How is Elrich Spending the Money?

The leading post’s performance was remarkable because its number of page views greatly exceeded the total enrollment of Northwood High School.  This suggests that the post spread far and wide, possibly including other MCPS schools.  This is yet another indicator of some extent of discontent with MCPS.

Three other posts concerned antisemitism, a topic which often makes our top ten lists.  This is further evidence of the level of concern about antisemitism within the county.  School board candidate Rita Montoya made a smart move by vowing to battle antisemitism in her recent mailer.

Let’s go back to the school system.  Month after month, posts about MCPS appear frequently in our top page view lists.  MoCo voters care about MCPS and they always have.  Well voters, if you want to take action, then VOTE in this year’s school board elections.  To help you decide on your picks, I republish links to our school board questionnaire responses below.  They revealed many important differences between the candidates.

What is MCPS’s biggest problem and what would you do to fix it?

Describe any experience you have in overseeing budgets of large organizations.

Incumbents: Please describe your achievements on the board.  Non-incumbents: Tell us something you would do differently than the incumbent against whom you are running.

Should parents have the right to opt out of curriculum materials that disagree with their religious beliefs?

Should police officers be stationed inside high schools?  Should they be stationed inside middle schools?  And if they are stationed inside any schools, how should they interact with students?

Montgomery Perspective has reported on MCPS transfers of millions of dollars out of instructional salaries and towards other purposes.  Is this a problem?  If it is, how would you fix it?

Interim Superintendent Monique Felder once took $6,000 from an outside group connected to school vendors while she was the chief academic officer in Nashville public schools.  Will you introduce and work to pass a policy change banning such payments to MCPS employees?

On to May!