With less than a month until the Nov. 5 general election, candidates for the Montgomery County school board discussed issues ranging from oversight of the public schools and whether curriculum opt-outs should be allowed to safety and opportunity gaps during a forum hosted Wednesday night by the Montgomery County League of Women Voters.
All six candidates in the three races participated in the forum — incumbent Lynne Harris and Rita Montoya competing for an open at large seat, incumbent Shebra Evans and Laura Stewart vying for the District 4 seat and candidates Brenda Diaz and Natalie Zimmerman competing for the District 2 seat. The forum attracted an audience that filled the boardroom at Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) headquarters at 15 W. Gude Drive in Rockville.
This is at least the second forum held for the school board election since the May primary. Four candidates participated in a September forum held by the Montgomery County Taxpayers League. On Sunday at 7:30 p.m. the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington is hosting a forum at Congregation Beth El at 8215 Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda.
Wednesday’s 90-minute forum raised questions that spanned the myriad issues impacting MCPS, including what the candidates would prioritize for spending in the budget for the next fiscal year. Co-founder of Asian Americans Mobilize, Organize, Vote & Empower (AAMOVE), Tonia Bui, moderated the event.
Evans and Harris said the board needed to ensure MCPS was receiving a “return on investment” in programs. On a similar note, Montoya, a PTA president and lawyer, said funds must be spent wisely and focus on educating students. Stewart, a former local and countywide PTA leader, highlighted ensuring the district is meeting HVAC and building maintenance needs, a sentiment echoed by other candidates.
Diaz, a former MCPS teacher and current teacher with the online program Fusion Global Academy, said safety should be a priority. She said she also would focus on dedicating money toward achieving academic proficiency and improving testing scores.
“Looking at tutoring programs, fully staffing our schools … and making sure that we remove the rot and the waste within central office,” Diaz said.
Zimmerman, a third grade teacher at Wheaton Woods Elementary School in Rockville, said she wanted to turn the budget conversation from a seasonal item to a discussion that happens year-round. The board should turn a “trust deficit” into a “transparency surplus,” she said.
“I can tell you that I look at some of the line items, and I wonder how that’s connecting back to the 8-year-olds that I spend all day in front of,” Zimmerman said. “We need to make sure that when we go line item by line item, that it does directly connect back to our classrooms.”
Should students be allowed to opt out of a curriculum?
When asked about their opinion on critical race theory and allowing parents to opt their students out of a curriculum, Evans, Stewart, Harris and Zimmerman said they didn’t support an opting-out option because students needed to learn about others in a diverse community.
“Diversity is our reality, but inclusion is the work,” Harris said. “Our job is to create inclusive and affirming classrooms full of windows and mirrors where students see themselves reflected in the content that they’re learning … and they’re also learning to appreciate those whose lives and experiences, cultural and traditions are different than theirs.”
Montoya didn’t explicitly say if she supported opting out, but said kids needed to learn to engage with all people and see themselves represented in books. She also said community members needed to treat each other with respect even if they didn’t agree on certain topics. Diaz said she did support opting out, citing concerns raised by some members of the Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals in 2022.
Montoya and Stewart noted that critical race theory isn’t taught in MCPS schools. Critical race theory is an “academic and legal framework that denotes that systemic racism is part of American society – from education and housing to employment and healthcare,” according to the Legal Defense Fund. It is not listed as part of the MCPS curriculum.
To address opportunity gaps in the school system, Harris and Montoya said programs and activities needed to be available to all students. Montoya also said pre-kindergarten expansion was important to address academic proficiency gaps, especially for Black and brown students, a point Stewart echoed.
“We need to attack the opportunity gap from the beginning,” Stewart said.
Zimmerman and Stewart also said they supported an early alert system to inform parents when their students may be falling behind. MCPS is currently testing a warning system in five elementary schools.
Dealing with staffing issues
Several questions also raised the issues of staffing deficits and creating pipelines into MCPS jobs, such as teachers and bus drivers.
Several candidates said creating a positive work environment, as well as ensuring competitive wages, was important for recruiting bus drivers. Montoya said she’s heard from MCPS bus drivers that erratic schedules have posed challenges for drivers.
“Anyone looking for a job wants that job to be more attractive based on the wage that you’re offering, so making it a competitive job with a competitive wage with great working conditions [is important],” Evans said.
When it comes to teacher shortages, Stewart, Evans and Harris said district officials needed to “grow their own” by investing in high school students who are interested in teaching.
Several candidates agreed that teaching needs to be more manageable. Montoya said the board should lower class sizes and Zimmerman suggested eliminating tedious work that wasn’t beneficial for teachers.
Diaz said teachers should become “masters of their content” and be required to hold a degree in the subject they teach.
Can district oversight, school safety be improved?
School board oversight of the district came up — a relevant topic since a county audit committee gave MCPS a “failing grade” for electric bus implementation. Stewart proposed creating a position to oversee contracts to ensure they’re being followed. Harris said she believed there needed to be a “soup to nuts” review of all MCPS policies to determine if all policies are relevant and if they need to be amended. Montoya said contracts and policies needed to be clear and comprehensive.
“If we give vague phrases or vague terms … that then leads to inconsistency. It leads to policies that may not be implemented with fidelity,” Montoya said.
To address safety in schools, Diaz said the use of county police officers as school resource officers (SROs) in schools needed to be embraced. Currently, schools utilize community engagement officers (CEOs) who are assigned to high school clusters but don’t patrol school hallways. Montoya said bringing law enforcement into a school should only be reserved for very serious incidents, but that law enforcement also needed to build relationships with students and staff to help the school.
Zimmerman said necessities such as ensuring all doors lock, unlike her own classroom door, needed to be addressed to make students and staff feel safe in school.
Early voting for the election will take place from Oct. 24-31 at the same locations used in the primary election held in May. Any voter can request a mail-in ballot. The deadline for registering to vote in advance is Tuesday, but voters can register during early voting or on Election Day.
MoCo360 reporter Ginny Bixby contributed to this story.
