By Adam Pagnucco.
As the year 2024 is about to end, let’s look at back at the stories YOU picked as the biggest ones on Montgomery Perspective over the past year. Here are the top ten, arranged in ascending order of page views.
10. Are You Ready for Bethany Mandel?
February 12
When author and conservative celebrity Bethany Mandel ran for a seat on the school board, lots of page views followed. But Mandel never raised a lot of money and couldn’t get out of the primary, so I guess MoCo voters weren’t ready for her after all.
Bethany Mandel would have made an interesting school board member.
9. Mink Refuses to Support Bigger Penalties for Street Racing
February 14
Council Member Kristin Mink has emerged as one of the county’s foremost progressive leaders early in her first term, but if she has an Achilles heel, this sort of thing is it. (Months after this post, she also voted against funding to expand the county’s drone program.) MoCo voters are fed up with crime and a skillful opponent could exploit her criminal justice positions in a reelection campaign.
8. What MCPS Employees Think About Their Schools, Part Five
March 12
Part of a six-part series on MCPS’s 2023 staff climate survey, this post discussed employee views of working conditions by high school. I will be writing about MCPS’s 2024 climate survey soon.
7. Republican Sample Ballot Recommends Diaz for School Board
September 24
One word: Google. This post made our list because voters were eagerly searching for information on school board candidates. Those who came to our site found out quickly that Brenda Diaz was the choice of the county GOP. I bet they voted accordingly, both for Diaz’s benefit and otherwise.
6. Northwood High School Students to Walk Out Tomorrow
April 23
This post’s page views far exceeded enrollment at Northwood High School, demonstrating how this news spread around the county. And the students did indeed walk out to protest school construction delays.
5. Are Layoffs Necessary at MCPS?
May 28
Of all the problems faced by MCPS under its former leadership, this was the darkest hour. Despite getting an increase of $157 million from the county council, MCPS management still openly floated the prospect of layoffs. Those layoffs never came to be, but the whole episode was a black eye for the school system, especially among employees who did nothing to deserve this level of incompetence from their bosses.
4. Evans Counters Stewart with Endorsements of Her Own
September 20
Google strikes again as information-hungry voters wanted to know who was supporting school board incumbent Shebra Evans. (She still lost.) This is why the rest of the media should do a better job of covering school board races: if you write about them, the readers will come.
3. Is This the Creepiest Get Out the Vote Mailer Ever?
October 30
This story rocketed across the local media and attracted a cease and desist letter from Attorney General Anthony Brown. Whatever the nonprofit that sent the mailer intended, I bet this level of backlash was not it.
I’m still waiting for my updated “voting report card.”
2. New Proposed Interim Superintendent Has Baggage
February 5
Interim Superintendent Monique Felder had a rocky rollout and never really recovered, setting the stage for the arrival of current Superintendent Thomas Taylor.
February 22
All this story did was reprint a series of tweets from journalists at the Washington Post and WAMU, but it rocketed all over Reddit and other sites. Once the wreckage was fully revealed, it became clear that WAMU was the latest media entity to face huge cuts. I have seen that story in various forms since I started writing nearly 20 years ago and it continues in the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun today.
On to 2025!