Point – Counter Point

The Howard County Blogs will be conducting a general election online forum.  I didn’t expect a primary forum/debate for House of Delegates District 9A when I posed some questions to Melissa.  The questions regarded Melissa’s pledge to not increase taxes combined with the endorsements she received from union organizations that do support tax increases in order to further their own missions.

It would be interesting to have Greg Fox, Jim Adams, and Wayne Livesay participate in a similiar dialogue on this blog.  I know all three are readers of this blog too.

The question was for Melissa Covolesky.  She “replied” in the comments section which I put in a post (I pledge no tax increasess ii…) so it would get greater visability. 

The whining that Melissa refers to in the previous comments/post may be this letter written by Delegate Gail Bates.

School Grading Software IV

Just in case you didn’t see it in the Baltimore Sun yestereday.  John-John Williams IV had this article. 

School Data System in Doubt – Acquisition clouds future of troubled information program

I hadn’t realized that Chancery (the software maker) had been bought out.  That does raise some questions.  I will have to do a little checking and find out why Pearson bought Chancery.  Was it for their products or for their customers?  The question is will Pearson keep supporting the software?

This trouble program will indeed be discussed during the board meeting today.  I am sure some citizens will ask questions as well, perhaps the PTA, or a school board candidate, or a parent…

The school system employed a patch called “Grade Transporter”.  It is simply a patch to help get over this rough patch.

To use Grade Transporter once again, system employees have had to develop a new application so that schedules could be produced, according to Glascock, who also estimated that only 60 percent of current employees were familiar with the older program.

I wonder what this cost?

I think this is the first time I saw a School Board member quoted on this issue:

“Initially, when the first reports of problems surfaced, it seemed that staff was getting it under control,” said school board member Courtney Watson. “This latest failure is troubling. We have to look at the vendor for redress. The vendor failed. We need to hold the vendor accountable.”

As I said in my previous post regarding Joshua Kaufman’s statement regarding redress.  Redress is fine if it is a Chancery problem.  However, if it is a matter of poor planning and oversight then I don’t think Chancery is on the hook.  It could be a combination of the two “poor planning and board oversight” and “poor software” – I have seen that before.

I remind my readers that this isn’t some small issue.  This effects kids, staff, and administration.  I haven’t seen the board step up.  Perhaps the relationship with Chancery (the school  system is on their board of of advisors) has obscured the objectivity of the Board of Eduction and the Technology department.

Now being on Chancery’s board of advisors (a customer user group advising the software maker) why didn’t we know about Nashville and DoDEA?  Wow.