By Adam Pagnucco.
It’s early 2027 and the new five-member school board majority gets down to work. LGBTQ+ curriculum materials are withdrawn. The system’s racial equity policies are scrapped as a “study” of a new policy begins. Boundary study work is stopped. Spending per student is equalized across schools, ending MCPS’s practice of directing more money to schools with high FARMs and ESOL rates. Collective bargaining negotiations are halted. And an investigation of alleged misconduct by Superintendent Monifa McKnight begins after allegations are planted in the press. The message is passed along to McKnight that her services are no longer required. Within months, she leaves and is followed out the door by her leadership team. A red-state superintendent is promptly hired in closed session as the system’s makeover begins.
It could never happen here, right?
But here is the thing: never is a big word. While it might be unlikely, it’s not impossible. Even in Montgomery County.
Look at the rest of the country. Conservatives have long contested school board races but the intensity of that project has picked up since COVID shutdowns of in-person learning. USA Today studied the efforts of two national conservative groups – the 1776 Project PAC and Moms for Liberty – to elect candidates to school boards in 2022 and found successes in California, Florida, New Jersey and Carroll County, Maryland. In June, Moms for Liberty vowed at a national summit held in Philadelphia to run more candidates all over the nation. PBS lists Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Heritage Foundation as allies of the group. Currently, Moms for Liberty has a PAC, a Victory Fund and a Super PAC at the federal level but no campaign account in Maryland… yet.
Moms for Liberty is already active in Montgomery County. They have a chapter here, have interviewed with MoCo360 and have supported protests against MCPS’s LGBTQ+ curriculum. The chapter states on its website, “We activate liberty-minded leaders to serve in elected positions.”
A Moms for Liberty video of a statement at a school board meeting referring to next year’s election.
Another group at the curriculum protests, the Coalition of Virtue, publicly said that they would be running a slate for school board. Their activities have been covered by American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Tim Carney, who is a political columnist for the Washington Examiner.
MCPS has already seen one recent fiercely contested school board election. In the winter of 2019-20, the system’s gathering of information for a boundary study led to the emergence of candidates who opposed it. The most notable of them was then-Bethesda resident Stephen Austin, who finished third in the at-large primary behind Post-endorsed Lynne Harris and MCEA-endorsed Sunil Dasgupta. The boundary study insurgents did not win any seats but they did shake up local politics for a while. And they did so without getting national money – Austin himself raised just $22,795 (which included $1,000 of self-funding).
In retrospect, the 2020 primary now looks like a harbinger of coming conflict. Consider what has happened since then: COVID, debate over in-school learning, academic performance problems associated with remote work, rising crime and hate crime (including swastikas) in schools, labor disputes, leadership changes, attendance problems, multiple tax hikes for schools (property, impact and recordation), protests over LGBTQ+ curriculum materials and now a sexual harassment scandal which MCPS is mismanaging.
With every successive controversy, MCPS leaders circle the wagons and reject criticism. Their relationships with the executive branch, county council and unions are becoming increasingly strained. The left is upset at the sexual harassment scandal while the right is additionally unhappy about the LGBTQ+ curriculum issue. Defenses of MCPS from the outside are hard to find.
Montgomery County voters are not ideologically conservative overall. However, the general electorate is not as progressive as is assumed by many and has a history of voting for tax limits and term limits. It’s reasonable to believe that the long string of controversies – some of which are not MCPS’s fault – is taking a toll on its reputation with the public. A well-funded conservative attempt to take over the school board has a LOT of fodder to work with.
Could it actually happen? We will start exploring its prospects next.