By Adam Pagnucco.
Back in March, I ran a series showing answers to a 7-question questionnaire for school board candidates. That questionnaire was sent to candidates running in the primary and almost all of them responded. With the general election approaching, I am reprinting the answers of the candidates who won the primaries. The questions I asked back then were:
1. What is MCPS’s biggest problem and what would you do to fix it?
2. Describe any experience you have in overseeing budgets of large organizations.
3. For incumbents only: Please describe your achievements on the board. For non-incumbents only: Tell us something you would do differently than the incumbent against whom you are running.
4. Should parents have the right to opt out of curriculum materials that disagree with their religious beliefs?
5. Should police officers be stationed inside high schools? Should they be stationed inside middle schools? And if they are stationed inside any schools, how should they interact with students?
6. Montgomery Perspective has reported on MCPS transfers of millions of dollars out of instructional salaries and towards other purposes. Is this a problem? If it is, how would you fix it? For reference: https://montgomeryperspective.com/tag/teacher-salary-series/
7. Interim Superintendent Monique Felder once took $6,000 from an outside group connected to school vendors while she was the chief academic officer in Nashville public schools. Will you introduce and work to pass a policy change banning such payments to MCPS employees? For reference: https://montgomeryperspective.com/2024/02/05/new-proposed-interim-superintendent-has-baggage/
In addition, I have since asked the general election candidates three more questions:
1. MCPS has recently issued an RFP for a boundary review that would affect 19 of its 25 high schools and a similar proportion of middle schools. Do you support the RFP as written? If not, what would you do differently?
2. Since 2016, MCPS grading policy has required that teachers round up a student’s first and second quarter grades in a course when calculating the semester grade. Two examples: an “A” for the first quarter and a “D” for the second quarter must be rounded up to a “B” for the semester grade; a “B” for the first quarter and an “E” for the second quarter must be rounded up to a “C”. Do you support changing this policy so that the trend of the first and second quarter grades in a course determines whether they’re rounded up or down in calculating the semester grade?
3. Recently, I have written about problems with MCPS’s electric bus contract. Specifically, the school board has been instructed by the Appellate Court of Maryland to reconsider a challenge to the contract by a losing bidder and to consider evidence of criminal conduct in the contract award. However, MCPS representatives told the county council that they are renegotiating the original contract and intend to renew it. What should the school board do about this issue?
So that’s ten questions answered by the candidates, each of which will account for a separate post in this series.
We will begin tomorrow!