What We’ve Got Here is Failure to Communicate

Truth will out. Or at least, something will. In the age of the cell phone, students are capable of swapping tales at the literal speed of light, spreading the lurid details of the latest scandal, outrage, and intrigue. Amongst this web of fact, fiction, and somewhere in between, exists a trusted source of truth—the school administration. Parents rely on the administration to dispel the fiction their child hurriedly texted them during the lockdown, but a troubling trend has emerged; rather than stepping in to assuage the PTSA’s fears, administrations have chosen silence.
On January 23rd, two students were found unconscious in a bathroom, having consumed an excessive amount of alcohol. Ambulances were called, students were kept in their first period, and security paced the halls nervously. Amid the confusion, students swapped rumors freely. Suddenly the alcohol became cannabis, then it was fentanyl; the students were walked out, then taken out on a stretcher.
Why is it that the same administration that had called the ambulance and set the school on high alert couldn’t keep parents informed?
Parents were kept in the dark about the unfolding events, with Tattler reporters Bennett Galper and Katherine Jones breaking the unraveling story before an official announcement. While the Tattler thoroughly vetted its sources and withheld any identifying details, it nevertheless should not have broke the news to parents. That Tattler reporters set the narrative for parents and other news outlets alike is extraordinarily inappropriate. The school failed to fulfill one of its basic duties: keeping parents in the loop about their child’s safety.
MCPS’s duties are shockingly opaque. A concerned parent or student cannot even access the “Principal’s Handbook” or their “Parent Involvement Toolkit” on the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) website. How are we supposed to understand if administrators are doing their jobs correctly if we don’t even know what they’re being instructed to do? B-CC administration can hold all the town halls it wants. The fact that these Potemkin villages pop up after every one of these incidents seems like a tacit acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
Poor communication is a trend in and out of Montgomery County. Prince George’s County Public Schools is currently being sued by the guardians of a 14 year-old with developmental disabilities for allegedly failing to deliver justice in a sexual assault case. The victim was allegedly assaulted by six male students, and yet her guardians were not notified of the incident until two days after, when they were hastily informed because the victim had to submit to forensic examination. The victim was even suspended for a week by the school system in an unfathomable perversion of justice.
In Loudoun County, Virginia, school officials were condemned by a grand jury for a “breakdown of communication amongst multiple parties” that led to a male student accused of sexual assault to be merely transferred to another school, where he committed another act of sexual violence in the span of five months. The report went on to fault the Loudoun County Schools Superintendent for a “​​stunning lack of openness, transparency, and accountability.”
More than just upsetting PTSA members, poor administrative communication has seriously imperiled the most vulnerable students.
These cases are extreme examples, but they demonstrate an institutional, rather than individual, problem. County school boards need to release administrative training manuals to public scrutiny so parents and students can hold administrations accountable. The B-CC administration needs to drop its policy of “(don’t) do first, apologize later”. Until then, poor communication will continue to open students to harm and close parents off from the immediate safety of their children.