On Thursday night School Superintendent Thomas Taylor attended a gathering organized by the Montgomery Virtual Academy (MVA) at the Gaithersburg Library. Board of Education President Karla Silvestre and At-Large Board Member Lynne Harris also attended.
Dr. Taylor told MCM, “I was invited to come and listen, and this is a group of parents and students, and I want to do just that.”
In June, the Board of Education closed the Virtual Academy due to budget considerations. That decision impacted nearly 900 students and their families, who now must seek other educational options.
Hours before the meeting, Taylor sent a letter to parents of MVA students offering a limited solution to the recent closing of the Academy due to budget considerations. Here’s how Dr. Taylor described it to MCM, “We’ve just proposed and it’s not a done deal, but there’s definitely a proposal to expand some of our services for some of our more medically fragile students and offer a more robust virtual opportunity for some of them.”
MVA teacher Nancy Cipolla came to the library to support the Academy’s families and students. She noted the proposed solution would not start at the beginning of the regular school year. “So they are offering a hybrid program where students will get mostly synchronous learning…but that will not start until November when the second marking period begins,” she said.
Under the current proposal eligible students would have to seek out an alternative system which offers only 6 hours of learning a week.
During the Zoom meeting, which MCM could not attend in person due to library policy, it became apparent students with mental health challenges might not fit the definition of “medically fragile.” Parents and teachers expressed many concerns to Taylor and Silvestre during the more than two-hour meeting. Dr. Taylor offered tips to concerned parents considering reintegrating their children into classroom learning using resources already available in the school system.
Teacher Cipolla expressed her appreciation for the solution and its intent but felt Virtual Academy students deserved to start their school year with their peers. She concluded, “These are the students I have served for the past 3 years. These students deserve an equitable opportunity of education, and that has been denied to them.”
