April 8th, 2024 – This testimony was given to the County Council on the FY2025 operating budget Hello my name is Jason Makstein and I run the blog Moderately MOCO but today I am testifying as a community advocate about various items in the operating budgets. My focus will beContinue Reading

March 10, 2024 – Anonymous Op-ed What does MCPS have in common with the old Soviet Union? Both were or are good at “disappearing” top staff. The USSR was famous for air-brushing the disfavored out of photographs or even paintings. MCPS simply wipes their names from the organizational chart withContinue Reading

March 1, 2024 On 2/27/24 MCPS went over some upcoming boundary study updates at the board of education Facilities and Boundaries work session meeting. See the full video here or read below for a summary and to see the images. Note that as this was a discussion and work session,Continue Reading

February 23, 2024 “We need you to succeed, the taxpayers need you to succeed, and more importantly, our kids need you to succeed” That was said by Councilman Evan Glass to MCPS Board President Karla Silvestre on February 8th. The key phrase there is “our kids”. As an employee ofContinue Reading

February 13, 2024 – Employee that allegedly hindered OIG’s Investigation and was allegedly a key source of cronyism and retaliation in MCPS is back from Administrative Leave Update 2/13/24 11:30pm – This article was updated to correct the title (and subsequent details) which was originally written as “Chief of DistrictwideContinue Reading

February 2, 2024 – 5:25pm. Updated 6:30pm. Confirming our previous posts on social media that Dr. McKnight would be resigning today (even guessing the time within a few minutes), the Board of Education has announced that they have agreed to mutually separate effective immediately: Today the Montgomery County Board ofContinue Reading

December 20, 2023 Background Since the start of the pandemic, questions have arisen based upon both the effectiveness and demand of virtual learning. This has continued as MCPS created a Virtual Academy when most students returned to the classrooms. Moderately MOCO received an exclusive MPIA response with answers to questionsContinue Reading

Today the Montgomery County Board of Education provided an update on the Beidleman report. The MoCo BOE only publicly posts on X (formerly known as Twitter), we wanted to share with you any updates to this case since not everyone is on that platform. There is a letter to localContinue Reading

A reader wrote in to share their terrible experiences at Farquhard MS with Joel Beidelman as principal without revealing their identity… The full incident details are quite severe, but details have been removed to protect identities. For those not familiar with the current events surrounding Joel Beidelman, he was recentlyContinue Reading

Introduction Board meeting begins with Pledge of Allegiance and roll call. Agenda is revised and appointments are announced for associate superintendent position. Detailed AI Generated Summary for [Board of Education – Board Business Meeting – 5/25/23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp-FeH4Y9gk ) Appointments [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp-FeH4Y9gk&t=8 ) New appointments in Montgomery County Public Schools – Several newContinue Reading