By Adam Pagnucco.

District 2 Board of Education candidate Brenda Diaz has released a video attacking her opponent, Natalie Zimmerman, on the issue of school security.

Diaz and Zimmerman have different views on this issue.  Back in March, I asked all the school board candidates whether police officers should be stationed inside high schools and middle schools.  These are the responses from the two candidates.

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Diaz: Yes, police officers should be stationed inside high schools and middle schools. As a former Social Studies teacher at Gaithersburg High School when School Resource Officers were still present in our building, I remember the positive relationships the officers formed with students and teachers. School Resource Officers served as mentors and role models to our students. MCAAP’s letter to the Board of Education affirmed their presence in our schools when they proclaimed their importance in meeting the Safe to Learn Act of 2018. Community Engagement Officers currently serve a cluster of schools. Therefore, “officers who may be called to a school (and who are not a part of the SRO program) most likely do not have that history or a collaborative and positive relationship with the student body.” We want MCPS to “truly [be] a system that builds and appreciates relational community,” as Dr. Christine Handy noted on behalf of MCAAP. Unfortunately, MCPS has not released the 2023-2024 School Safety & Security at a Glance report, only that for 2021-2002. However, with teachers anonymously reporting a string of major fights at Clarksburg High School and another report of a student arrested for bringing a loaded gun to Gaithersburg High School, the question arises of whether the rise in violence in our schools would leave MCPS in violation of the Safe to Learn Act of 2018. It is clear that safety must be a priority for the Board.

Zimmerman: I do not support the use of School Resource Officers (SROs) in any MCPS schools. The Maryland Safe to Learn Act of 2018 requires that schools are provided adequate law enforcement coverage – not that SROs are required to be in each building. The National Association of School Resource Officers reported in 2021 that over 68% of the SROs surveyed stated that they saw law enforcement as their main role and mentorship as a second aspect – despite any Memorandums of Understanding their schools may have written. This data supports the idea that SROs are part of the school to prison pipeline. Instead of SROs, there needs to be a greater number of mental health supports for students. MCPS is currently not meeting the nationally recommended guidelines for school counselors, school psychologists, or social workers and meeting these guidelines should be the first step in schools. Students deserve support not shackles.

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This issue difference is one of the biggest among the remaining candidates for school board.

Diaz has now released a video showing Zimmerman’s responses to security questions in multiple candidate forums along with media coverage of violence in schools.  The video appears in the embedded X post shown below.