Been wondering what Joshua Starr is really like?
Then head to Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville next Tuesday night or Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring on Wednesday night to find out.
The new superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools will be holding “meet and greets” with community members from 7 to 8:30 p.m. both nights. Activities for kids will be provided as well as interpreters for Spanish, Chinese, Amharic, Korean, Vietnamese and French.
Starr takes over July 1 for Jerry Weast, who is retiring after 12 years of running MCPS.
That date may come none too soon for the 41-year-old superintendent who is spending his last days as head of the Stamford, Conn., public schools embroiled in a battle with the teachers’ union over 12 classroom teacher layoffs announced last week.
The issue revolves around stipends that the school system had agreed to pay teachers who also were math and literacy coaches. But the school system no longer can afford to pay the stipends and decided to do away with the coaching positions, setting off a “Domino effect” that resulted in the layoffs, Starr and school administrators told The Stamford Advocate.
The move did not sit well with Stamford Education Association President Lori Rossomondo, who said in an interview Monday that the school administrators “broke everything they could possibly break” concerning an agreement with the union.
Although the union and Starr have been on rocky terms in recent times—the union has filed an unprecedented eight unfair labor practices against the school system—Rossomondo hopes Starr will do well leading MCPS.
“I always wish the best going forward. Hopefully, he’ll choose not to make the same mistake twice,” she said. “But he’s choosing to make the mistake now and that bothers me.”
