Montgomery County Public Schools has sunk to a new low. It’s using a 10-year-old as a political football.
A meeting scheduled for Friday between Cabin John Middle School principal Paulette Smith and the parents of a precocious 10-year-old who was told she could not enroll in sixth grade because of her age never happened, with both sides blaming the other for the cancellation.
However, Dr. Aki Singam, the girl’s mother, complained in an email to Smith that “despite your claims that an outcome had not been predetermined, the sole purpose of the meeting was to justify the ongoing harassment of my child by [GT program director] Marty Creel and, at his behest, to discuss a SINGLE predetermined option of placing my child at Seven Locks [Elementary School].
“Both you and Dr. Weast are acutely aware that Mr. Creel has engaged in this harassment in retaliation for my husband’s successful showing that the GT program implemented by him violates the requirements of Brown v. Board of Ed., etc.”
Smith’s decision to turn away the Singams’ daughter, who had already been welcomed at the school and completed the summer math packet, was obviously due to her parents’ vocal dissent about the stealth dismantling of Montgomery County’s GT program.
The message she’s sending to other parents is as clear as it is chilling: Speak out and your child will be punished.
