Last week Rachel Buser, an FCPS parent, started a petition against renewing superintendent Dr Liggins’ contract. Although the petition has more than 400 signatures it is not enough to spark action. This put negative attention on FCPS as a whole rather than just Dr. Liggins.
It is good that parents have the ability to comment and act on issues involving their children. But when they criticize administrative decisions that are made for child safety, issues involving misrepresentation and enrollment can occur.
These series of complaints may have been motivated by decisions involving NTI days, snow days, or budgeting issues. In some cases parents often fail to understand that FCPS has to take every single child in FCPS into consideration before making a decision that is best for everyone. At the end of the day the administrators making these decisions know how to do their jobs in a way that is beneficial for all FCPS families.
When parents put public schools in a bad light for any reason, FCPS can lose students. Enrollment is extremely important to all public schools, not just FCPS. With the rise of private and charter schools, public schools have had lower enrollment rates. According to the National Center for Education Statistics “More recently, private K–12 enrollment was 4.7 million students in both fall 2019 (the year before the coronavirus pandemic) and fall 2021. In comparison, the number of K–12 students who were enrolled in public schools was 2 percent lower in fall 2021 than in fall 2019 (48.0 vs. 49.2 million).” This lower enrollment rate can cause public schools to not receive an adequate amount of funding.
When parents complain about schools with no real or sufficient evidence it can hurt a school’s reputation and this could lead parents to enroll their children into a private school instead of a public school.
It seems as though parents file these types of complaints or start petitions to help their children. But really they just hurt the school system as a whole which could eventually lead to a decrease in the quality of their own child’s education. Parents need to learn how the school system works. Not just to complain about it, but to be more aware of the environment their children learn and grow in and how their children’s safety is prioritized.
In certain situations with certain circumstances, complaints and petitions can be viable and necessary. When there is sufficient evidence and reason backing the petitions and complaints. So, before people try to get someone fired for their decision making, they should educate themselves about the reasoning behind those decisions and how their actions could affect FCPS.
