February 26, 2010
Dear Friends,
The following relates to the February 19th meeting about Articulated Instruction Module (AIM).
The House and Senate members of the Baltimore County Delegation met on February 19th to discuss the AIM Program with Superintendent Joseph Hairston regarding the highly contested grading system. This issue has raised a number of questions over the past few weeks and because of this, the Superintendent stated he would discontinue the mandatory implementation of the reporting component of this program. Upon further pressing, Dr. Hairston said the data collection aspect of the program has been suspended, then followed up by saying AIM’s reporting component would not be implemented. This was seen as good news.
The issues noted were in regard to the amount of time our teachers would spend recording the student’s mastering of more than 100 specific skills collected on a per student basis and then recorded in a twelve page report. It was indicated this process would take one and one half hours of input per student. The AIM program would have educators set classroom instruction aside to complete the data input. Many see this process as duplicative in light of what has been required by the No Child Left Behind Act.
Many questions were posed to the Superintendent about the development and copyright issues surrounding the creation of this program. The Assistant to Dr. Hairston, Dr. Barbara Dezmon, has renewed her copyright six times, the latest in 2006 for the AIM Program. This creates a questionable ethics issue.
I have joined in with other delegates in crafting a letter to the State’s Attorney’s office asking for an investigation. If you would like a copy of the letter please let us know.
As I stated in the hearing: “This program has caused a lot of harm and I hope that there will not be any retaliation to those teachers and staff that were not supportive of this program. Teachers need more time to teach and less time on data collection and I hope this never happens again.”
The University of Maryland, Baltimore Audit
The University of Maryland, Baltimore had quite an audit that came out late last week. It revealed that a senior management employee, Dean Karen Rothenberg of the Law school, received inappropriate payments totaling $410,000. These payments breakdown into two categories: $350,000 in FY 2007; $60,000 over FY 2007-FY2009. The $350,000 was characterized as compensation for a sabbatical that she had earned but did not take. In her initial appointment letter she could take a sabbatical after 5 years of service as Dean at full salary. The Chancellor’s response included in his testimony indicated: “Due to work commitments, Dean Rothenberg felt she was not in a position to exercise this option. In order to keep her on a Dean of the Law School, President David Ramsay opted to provide her with this $350,000 as payment for the unused sabbatical.”
Poor judgment and the disregard of USM policies caused swift action on the part of the Regents and the Chancellor to insist that Dr. Ramsay step down by March 1, 2010. The interim president will be the Medical School Dean Albert Reece until July when President Jay Perman will take over. A letter was sent to Karen Rothenberg indicating that the $60,000 in additional summer compensation she received be returned due to the lack of written documentation from her supervisor, President Ramsay, authorizing the payments. The investigation has been turned over to the Office of the Attorney General.
Chancellor Kirwan needs to address the policy governing the payments for summer research which in this audit equaled $1.1 million dollars. The auditors tested 36 compensation payments made to employees during FY 07 to 09 totaling $877,000 which was not disclosed or supported in UMB annual budget submission. The Chancellor is compensated by our tax dollars and for these types of issues to occur and not be addressed in a formal and timely matter is something he should be ultimately held responsible for. The lack of internal controls needs to be addressed so receipts and disbursements are properly accounted for. For the Audit Report of University System of Maryland, University of Maryland, Baltimore February 2010 see link: http://www.ola.state.md.us/Reports/Fiscal%20Compliance/UMB10.pdf.
I hope I never see another audit like this with disregard of our tax dollars in educating our students.
Sex Offender Laws
The growing problem of Maryland’s treatment of sexual offenders can be illustrated by the case of 11 year old Sarah Foxwell, who was abducted by a registered sex offender. She was taken by a sex offender who was recently arrested for breaking into a woman’s bedroom – the man who abducted her had previous convictions that included molesting a 12 year old girl and raping a 16 year old, but was released the same day he was arrested on a $10,000 bond. That very same day he was released on bond, he abducted Sarah from her Salisbury home. Governor O’Malley and many members of the Maryland General Assembly have proposed bills to respond to this problem to try to help keep children like Sarah Foxwell safe. The Governor has proposed an initiative that would put serious sex offenders under mandatory lifetime supervision after they were released from jail, including the possible use of GPS monitoring. The Governor’s office makes the case that, with this law in place this offender would not have been able to abduct Sarah because the arrest would have been in violation of his probation. There is proof from other states that lifetime supervision helps prevent the repeat of a sexual offense. Other bills that were introduced to the Judiciary Committee institute the practice of making sex offenders stay in jail longer by reducing the amount of diminution credits they can amass, these credits allow prisoners to get out of jail earlier. Right now a sex offender can get out of jail in 19 years on a 25 year sentence through the amassment of diminution credits. The diminution credits should be excluded for all those convicted of a sex offense, to keep children safer from predators.
Kindest Regards.
Very truly yours,
Susan L.M. Aumann
District 42, Baltimore County
410-841-3258
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