By Adam Pagnucco.
For weeks on end, Montgomery County residents have been eagerly awaiting the second report on MCPS’s sexual harassment scandal from Inspector General (IG) Megan Davey Limarzi. The report was widely anticipated to reveal the culpability of all MCPS leaders who were involved in the promotion of scandal-ridden Principal Joel Beidleman. The report is now out.
And it’s a punt.
Right away, Limarzi admitted that she was punting. Here is the very first paragraph in the report.
The Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated this review in response to assertions that the inadequate response to alleged misconduct committed by former principal Dr. Joel Beidleman was caused in part by shortcomings in how complaints of employee wrongdoing are handled by Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). It is important to note that this review focused on MCPS’s general processes involving complaint handling and investigations of employee misconduct. It did not examine specific allegations against Beidleman or MCPS’s actions to address them, nor did it re-examine the promotions process at MCPS which was part of the work done by a law firm hired by MCPS in August of 2023.
Here the IG references the report done by Jackson Lewis, the law firm previously employed by MCPS which has a history of union avoidance work and contributions to local politicians, including the chair of the county council’s education committee. County Executive Marc Elrich, among others, has rightly questioned the independence of that investigation. That’s why we needed the IG to review this matter. The IG has previously found that Beidleman did indeed engage in misconduct, but as for the senior officials who promoted him anyway, the IG refused to look into it. Instead, her long-awaited report is an anodyne discussion of processes which Superintendent Monifa McKnight – of course – has promised to fix.
So what do we have now? We have a heavily redacted report by Jackson Lewis which alleges that top officials knew about problems with Beidleman and one of them “improperly altered” the investigation timeline; various media reports often based on anonymous sources; an accusation of retaliation against the first MCPS official to investigate Beidleman; substantial turnover in the central office; a lawsuit by an MCPS teacher which could result in embarrassing revelations (unless MCPS uses taxpayer money to settle with the plaintiff before discovery); and an accusation by the IG that an MCPS official provided “evasive answers” to a different investigation.
Taken together, it all looks really bad. However, the superintendent has now stated that the school board wants to oust her and that’s serious business. Let’s bear in mind the dictum held by Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The above claims are deeply troubling, but they are not backed at this time by extraordinary evidence – at least the evidence in the public domain. That’s why we needed the IG to weigh in. The IG is a far more authoritative source than redacted law firm reports, lawsuits, anonymous statements to the media and unexplained turnover.
Instead, she punted.
At the very beginning of this scandal, we were promised transparency and accountability by Montgomery County and MCPS leaders. On three separate occasions – August 25, August 29 and September 8 – the school board used the words “transparent,” “thorough” and “expeditious” to describe how it would handle this scandal.
And on August 22, Board of Education President Karla Silvestre promised, “We the board want to assure our staff, students and families and the community that we will determine what happened and there will be accountability for any failures, either systemic or individual that are identified.” Superintendent Monifa McKnight added, “We want to know: who, what, when and why… Anyone, anyone who is implicated in wrongdoing will be held accountable. Period.” Just watch the video below.
Transparency and accountability. If this is what those words mean in practice, then transparency and accountability mean nothing in Montgomery County.