By Adam Pagnucco.
I hear this word over and over again. I hear it from education advocates. I hear it from labor. From elected officials. From progressives. From conservatives. And increasingly from ordinary people who are concerned by what they are reading in the Washington Post, MoCo360 and social media.
Accountability.
For MCPS.
I have lived in this county for 20 years. MCPS has always had ups and downs. It has more than 200 schools, more than 20,000 employees and more than 160,000 students. In any organization of that size, there is a lot going on. If anyone wants to find problems, that’s easy. It’s also easy to find good things because MCPS prepares thousands of graduates for college and work every year. The back and forth between problems and successes is nothing new.
But the last three years have produced more challenges than anything I have seen in such a short period. A contested boundary study. COVID. Academic problems related to remote learning. Labor disputes and a vote of no confidence by the teachers. Crime. Guns. Hate crime. Swastikas. Turnover at the top. Recruiting challenges. Attendance issues. A big budget fight. Tax hikes. And most recently, protests against LGBTQ+ curriculum materials as well as a huge sexual harassment controversy. When are they (and we) getting a break?
Let’s bear in mind that many of the above issues are not MCPS’s fault. The sheer size and centrality of the school district makes it both an agent and a recipient of social change. And MoCo is a diverse community in every conceivable way so MCPS has to deal with a whirlwind of conflicting opinions. Many people opposed temporary shutdowns of in-person learning. Many people supported them. Many people want to opt out of LGBTQ+ books. Many people are OK with them. No matter what MCPS leaders do, someone is going to criticize them.
It’s a very tough job to be a leader in MCPS.
That said, their current approach to the sexual harassment scandal reminds me of the pre-Me Too era when organizations like Fox News would send victims to their HR departments, lawyer up and activate their PR people rather than genuinely try to stop such behavior. And it’s not just about MCPS itself. Other than County Executive Marc Elrich and Council Members Dawn Luedtke and Evan Glass, all of whom have called for independent investigations, elected officials with power over MCPS seem silent and/or reluctant to get involved. Just look at the excuses that some of them offered to MoCo360. One council member who refused to sign the Luedtke/Glass letter calling for an inspector general takeover requested a “cost/benefit analysis” before doing so. Since when does the integrity of the school system require a “cost/benefit analysis?”
It’s all just so pathetic and disappointing.
MCPS leadership and the school board are circling the wagons right now. They seem to believe that they are bullet proof and answer to no one. In the short term, they may be right. The state has ultimate authority over them but seems unlikely to step in. So they can have their carefully vetted investigation, selectively report its findings to the public, set up their legal defense strategy against litigation and move on. But there are medium-term and long-term costs to this that they will one day face.
In the medium term, their relationships with other important stakeholders are fraying. The failure of anyone in the county executive’s office and the council building to unconditionally defend their approach to sexual harassment is telling. These people have substantial power over MCPS’s budget and their favor is important to have. The teachers union, which enjoyed a collaborative relationship with Superintendent Jerry Weast more than a decade ago, is apoplectic. Just watch the video of MCEA President Jennifer Martin’s testimony to the school board last week. She is upset because her members are upset. Imagine how far down this goes in the schools. And few of our state legislators seem to want anything to do with MCPS’s problems.
In the long term, the consequences are even more serious. MCPS has been one of the county’s most respected institutions for decades. Many residents (including me) moved here at least partly because of the opportunity to send kids to MCPS. That prestige was good for the school system, enabling them to get substantial budget increases and even tax hikes to support them. It also created the benefit of the doubt on many issues. When critics would raise problems, the typical parental reaction was often, “OK, that’s an issue, but it’s an exception in a generally well-run school district.”
That sheen is now fading. Discussion of MCPS is much more complicated than it used to be, and that was the case before the sexual harassment scandal. The trust of the community and its support for schools can no longer be taken for granted. That makes everything harder for all of MCPS’s stakeholders, which is basically all of us. It makes it especially hard to lead and govern the system.
And so there must be accountability. There must be a sense of professionalism, transparency and ethics. There must be confidence that MCPS is a public institution that respects employees, students, families and the broader community rather than a private entity existing for the benefit of its leaders. Because if no one else brings accountability to MCPS, it falls to the ultimate holders of authority to do so.
The voters.