• Gaithersburg High School, 6 p.m.
During a school board meeting this week, MCPS Associate Superintendent James Koutsos said that, in alignment with county COVID-19 guidelines, face coverings will not be required at outdoor graduations for people fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Fifth- and eighth-grade promotion ceremonies will be held virtually.
Rockville teacher wins MCPS Mark Mann award
Loretta Woods, the principal at Whetstone Elementary School in Rockville, was recently named the winner of MCPS’ annual Mark Mann Excellence and Harmony Award.
The award, established in 1991, is presented by the superintendent each year to honor an administrator who “has shown exceptional performance in promoting academic excellence, positive human relations, and community outreach,” according to school board documents.
State education officials review complaints of impropriety in Prince George’s Donna St. George Six weeks after a new chairwoman took over, the school board in Prince George’s County is mired in a controversy involving alleged improprieties in contracts and overreaches by leadership, claims that are being examined by Maryland education officials. The contentiousness follows the appointment of Juanita Miller, a former water utility commissioner who in January became chair of the governing board in the state’s second-largest school system and has clashed with an elected board majority. In recent days, Miller canceled a board meeting and wrote a letter to the leader of the Prince George’s County Council, saying that after several questionable incidents she is requesting an external audit of all board-initiated contracts in the past two years.
Pandemic learning takes another turn: Will teachers be in person in classrooms?
Donna St. George, Hannah Natanson and Perry Stein, The Washington Post
Feb. 6, 2021
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A third-grade class learns at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Southeast Washington on Friday.photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein.
After nearly a year of online learning, parents in the Washington region were thrilled to hear announcements from public schools, some of them tumbling out rapid-fire last week, that in-person learning will resume next month for students who choose it.
But families quickly discovered that in-person learning will not necessarily mean sitting in a classroom, being taught by a teacher. Instead, school officials in Maryland and Virginia have been hiring classroom monitors who will fill out school staffing - in some cases supervising classrooms as students continue to do online lessons.