Opinion: MCPS: Let’s confront our racial blind spots

Staffing guidelines can exacerbate disparities between schools

January 25, 2025 8:00 a.m. | Updated: January 25, 2025 8:50 a.m.

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor and I have something in common: We are both MCPS alumni who were inspired to return to the system that helped shape who we have become as adult professionals. With all that we presumably have in common, as a Black male I fear that our system’s institutions have also inevitably impacted us differently given the historical barriers that exist in our society based upon race and class — barriers I trust we both strive to dismantle.

With the school system’s proposed fiscal year 2026 operating budget under review, MCPS has an opportunity to reflect upon how to appropriately center equity across our communities. The current process has rightfully focused on workforce concerns as it regards class sizes and compensation, but the staffing guidelines as currently proposed also reveal racial blind spots that negatively target students, families, and staff of color — particularly in regard to school administrative leaders.

Research shows that students of all backgrounds benefit when Black educators are part of their academic experience. A 2017 Johns Hopkins University study revealed that Black students, especially Black boys from low-income households, are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college when they have been taught by at least one Black educator in elementary school. Similar research shows that Black educators have higher expectations for Black students, and that Black students are less likely to receive detentions, suspensions, or expulsions from Black educators. Nonetheless, Black educators remain underrepresented in MCPS (and nationally). The lack of Black male administrators is more substantial — all data points outlined in the 2022 MCPS systemwide antiracist audit.

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Given these areas of demonstrated need, MCPS currently exercises staffing guidelines that compound the harm caused by these disparities. The school system uses free and reduced meals or “FARMS” rates — widely regarded as measures of community poverty — to determine which MCPS schools host provisional assistant principals, or “assistant school administrators” (which don’t require the traditional pre-requisite of administrative certification but rather allow for the completion of such coursework while on the job). These roles provide a unique opportunity for those who come to the role through non-traditional means. Due to institutional racism, Black educators are most likely to benefit from such alternative pathways, yet more likely to work in schools where MCPS is replacing these opportunities with traditional assistant principal roles.

A 2021 Pew Research study revealed that in schools where students come from households with lower incomes, greater shares of educators were Black or Hispanic than in schools where students were wealthier. Meanwhile, at schools with bigger percentages of racial or ethnic minority students, larger shares of educators were Hispanic, Black or Asian American while the reverse was true for schools with more white students.

While these staffing guidelines may be well-intentioned, driven by the notion of positioning conventional established professionals in “high need” schools, they inherently suggest that communities of color will be better served using traditional notions about what makes one credentialed than by increasing opportunities to build a more diverse and inclusive pool of leadership (which data shows is actually a better predictor of positive impact).

These guidelines impacted the provisional assistant school administrator roles that existed in the county between fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025, which ends June 30. For instance, the provisional assistant principal roles that existed in Montgomery Blair and Wheaton high schools were slated for abolishment in fiscal year 2025. Meanwhile, those same roles were retained at Walt Whitman, Thomas S. Wootton, Winston Churchill, and Poolesville high schools. This disparity between schools in the Downcounty Consortium — traditionally located in more racially diverse communities with higher rates of poverty — and schools geographically located farther north or west is stark; the disparity mirrors institutional barriers that have existed for generations. These types of barriers have historically discouraged many Black male educators from seeking positions of administrative leadership.

The structural barriers to equal opportunities in our school system affected me directly. Over the course of nearly a decade, after coming to public education following a career in the nonprofit sector, I served as a classroom teacher, department chair, diversity specialist, and most recently a provisional assistant principal — all at my alma mater, Silver Spring’s Blair High School. The school is located in a community with higher FARMS rates as compared to other high school clusters in the county. Although MCPS recruited me in 2022 in an effort to increase the number of Black male administrators in the school system, my position was, according to the letter I received from the district’s central office, “abolished in the Fiscal Year 2025 operational budget.” MCPS notified me in February 2024 that — in return for my service — I would be involuntarily transferred. I felt gutted.

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Interestingly, despite my background and advocacy to address this issue (including two years serving in the full capacity of an assistant principal and graduate coursework in all of the state-mandated subject areas required for administrative certification), MCPS maintains that I am not qualified to be credentialed as an administrator and retain a permanent role as a school leader in our county public schools. Consequently, I now remain in an unresolved, prolonged provisional status with no reasonable path to advancement. In July 2024, I filed a civil complaint in Montgomery County Circuit Court against the county Board of Education concerning my employment status.

As a school system, we face many institutional and racially unjust challenges. However, if we fearlessly confront these hurdles and acknowledge where we fall short, we have a genuine chance to create better outcomes for all of our communities. While my future in our renowned school system remains uncertain, I hope that Taylor and the Board of Education reflect upon experiences like mine as they finalize the operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year, appropriately disrupting barriers that deny equal opportunities and stifle inclusion in our county.

Rahman A. Culver is an educational equity advocate certified in secondary social studies and special education. A former Takoma Park resident, he now lives in Prince George’s County.

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