By Adam Pagnucco.
On September 28, the county council brought in then-Superintendent Monifa McKnight and Board of Education President Karla Silvestre for a public interrogation. I wrote about it at the time – here are links to Parts One, Two and Three. Since then, a lot has happened. The most significant events have included the following:
October 23: An MCPS teacher known as Jane Doe sues MCPS and former Principal Joel Beidleman for sexual discrimination. The case is ongoing at this writing.
November 29: The Office of Inspector General (OIG) substantiates allegations of misconduct against Beidleman, the origin point of MCPS’s current scandals.
January 8: The OIG accuses an MCPS administrator of providing “evasive answers to direct questions” during an investigation.
January 12: MCPS investigator Khalid Walker, the first official to investigate Beidleman, accuses MCPS of retaliation in a MoCo360 article. Two weeks later, Walker tells MoCo360 that he was restored to his former position.
January 23: The OIG finds deficiencies in MCPS’s complaint process. Further, MCPS had been warned four times about this in recent years and had failed to correct them.
February 2: McKnight resigns after initially resisting efforts by the school board to oust her.
February 6: The board unanimously votes to appoint former MCPS administrator Monique Felder as interim superintendent. Felder carries a lot of baggage.
Looking back on the entire chain of events, which started with one August 11 story in the Washington Post, it’s genuinely amazing that an issue with one principal morphed into a sweeping leadership crisis that claimed a superintendent and will now play a major role in this year’s school board elections. Against this background, the council will hear from MCPS officials today.
The council should ask the following questions.
What was the reason why McKnight left the school system?
Neither the board nor McKnight has so far commented on why the board pushed her out. While the board has declined to offer superintendents new contracts before (such as Wilmer Cody in 1987 and Josh Starr in 2015), the ousting of a superintendent in the middle of a contract is very unusual. The last time I can find an incident resembling what happened to McKnight was in 1979, when the board forced out Superintendent Charles Bernardo.
The board would no doubt like to call this a personnel matter and avoid discussing it, but McKnight’s ouster has distressed some in the community (such as former school board member Jeanette Dixon and Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins). The video below shows protestors at the school board’s closed session on McKnight describing her removal as a “lynching.”
BREAKING: @MCPS Board of Education is in a CLOSED session — no word on what’s on their agenda right now.
Supporters of Superintendent Dr. Monifa McKnight showed up as the board voted for a closed session.
Several board members have called for McKnight to step down.@DCNewsNow pic.twitter.com/MrOeC21XjM
— Randi Bass (@RandiBonTV) February 2, 2024
Will MCPS ever release a full accounting of the events surrounding Beidleman’s promotion?
After the OIG punted on this issue, Council Members Evan Glass and Andrew Friedson called for the board to release an unredacted or less-redacted version of the Jackson Lewis report, the only known document believed to describe the events surrounding Beidleman’s promotion. At this point, we still know little about what happened. MCPS owes this to its stakeholders and taxpayers.
Who has been found responsible for the promotion and how have they been held accountable?
Over and over again, MCPS representatives have promised transparency and accountability. MCPS has seen a lot of turnover in its central office beyond McKnight’s departure. Their representatives should list everyone who has been found culpable in problems surrounding the promotion and detail exactly how they have been held accountable.
What specifically will be done to improve the complaint process?
As stated above, the OIG’s January 23 report found deficiencies in MCPS’s complaint process that had been ignored despite four different warnings about them. While the recent statement by the school board discusses some of this, MCPS officials should explain this in more detail.
Does MCPS allow top officials to be paid honorariums at events sponsored by outside organizations?
New Interim Superintendent Monique Felder accepted $6,000 in honorariums from a group connected to school vendors during her time in Nashville public schools. Does MCPS allow such conduct by its top officials? And if it does, would MCPS consider abolishing such payments?
I am sure that the council will have plenty of questions and I hope the above are among those asked. It’s unfortunate that the council will not put MCPS representatives under oath as they are entitled to do under county law. We shall see if that impedes any further pursuit of the truth, a quest that has not ended with the departure of Monifa McKnight.