Key Differences Between the School Board Candidates

By Adam Pagnucco.

This year, three seats on Montgomery County’s school board are on the ballot.  The contests are:

At-Large: Lynne Harris vs Rita Montoya

District 2: Brenda Diaz vs Natalie Zimmerman

District 4: Shebra Evans vs Laura Stewart

All county voters may vote in all three of the above races even if they do not live in the candidates’ districts.

MCPS is a huge employer and is one of the most critical institutions in the county, spending billions of dollars in taxpayer funding on operations and construction every year.  Here are a few key differences between this year’s school board candidates.

Harris and Evans are the incumbents and each has a challenger (Montoya and Stewart respectively).  All other candidates are non-incumbents.

Montoya, Zimmerman and Stewart are supported by the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA), which represents MCPS teachers.  A Super PAC funded by the state teachers union has invested $134,995 in the race, an amount exceeding the combined fundraising of the candidates.  Its digital campaign is promoting union-endorsed candidates and attacking their opponents.

Harris, Zimmerman and Evans are supported by SEIU Local 500, which represents MCPS support staff.

Diaz is being promoted by the county Republican Party and is under attack by the state Democratic Party, which has branded her an “extremist.”  A MoCo360 profile relates how Diaz left her teaching position at Gaithersburg High School because she did not want to comply with MCPS’s mask mandate.

Diaz is the only candidate who believes that police officers should be stationed inside middle and high schools.

Diaz is the only candidate who believes parents should be able to opt out of curriculum materials for religious reasons.

Montoya has sent out a mailer condemning antisemitism and advocating for mandatory Holocaust education in MCPS.

While all the candidates favor later starting bell times for middle and high schools, Zimmerman and Evans are the only ones who have not specifically committed to starting school at 8:30 AM or later.

MCPS’s electric bus contract is an expensive failure with a pending award challenge.  In responses to our question about the issue, Harris defended the contract, the non-incumbents criticized it and Evans blamed problems with it on the pandemic.

Harris, Diaz and Zimmerman have been MCPS teachers.  Harris, Montoya, Diaz, Evans and Stewart have all been parents of MCPS students.