Members of community committees who have been working with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) on its ongoing boundary study and program analysis were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, raising concerns about the transparency of the process, according to Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations (MCCPTA) President Brigid Howe.
“You need to show your work,” Howe told the county school board during the public comment period of its Tuesday meeting in Rockville. “We need to trust that recommendations are grounded in data benchmarking and best practice, not just vibes.”
MCPS spokesperson Liliana López said in a statement Tuesday that non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, “are a natural action for any organization involved in complex and impactful decision-making.”
López said MCPS uses confidentiality agreements to “safeguard proprietary information, such as during a procurement process,” and to “encourage open dialogue and feedback” while ensuring confidentiality during a deliberation process.
The school board approved a $1.3 million contract in December to hire FLO Analytics, an “employee-owned consulting” company with offices in Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts, to conduct a school boundary study that will impact 19 of the 25 high schools in MCPS. The school board must adopt new boundaries by March 2026 because new schools are scheduled to open in August 2027.
On May 17, MCPS released a set of options for the attendance boundaries for the new Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville. A set of options for the new Crown High School in Gaithersburg and the expansion of Damascus High School were released June 2. The district is collecting community feedback through surveys for both sets of options.
MCPS is also conducting an analysis of all programming offered in county high schools to address equity within programs.
According to a March 19 MCPS presentation to the board, the boundary study has included a Community Project Team, made up of “representatives from diverse community organizations,” with the goal of providing feedback and support for community engagement for the boundary study.
The program analysis includes an opportunity design team, made up of families, community members and school-based staff, that developed a framework for the project as well as providing feedback, according to the MCPS program analysis website and school board meetings.
Howe noted both community committees had to sign NDAs, which are contracts that bind those who sign them from sharing information with third parties not authorized by the contract, according to Cornell Law School.
“These projects are taxpayer-funded based on data that shouldn’t be kept secret. Threatening volunteers with penalties created a power imbalance and constrained participants to sharing individual feedback versus accurately reflecting their communities,” Howe told the board.
Additionally, the parameters for those who could join the groups were “so tightly constrained that the findings attributed to them can’t reliably reflect community support,” she said.
Howe said committee members also suggested several ways to improve outreach, including using school principals to share information and to hold information meetings in multiple languages and gather data on which high school clusters were providing feedback.
“None of that happened and the survey results reflect that,” Howe said. “For example, boundary and program options have been shared that significantly alter the [Downcounty Consortium], while survey feedback from those clusters is very limited.”
The Downcounty Consortium includes five high schools: Montgomery Blair, John F. Kennedy and Wheaton in Silver Spring; Albert Einstein in Kensington; and Northwood High, which is currently occupying the Woodward High School building while its Silver Spring building is being rebuilt.
MCPS was expected to provide an update on both the boundary study and program analysis during Tuesday’s school board meeting.
Howe noted that both committees participating in the study and program analysis also asked MCPS for additional data, which wasn’t shared, Howe said.
Several other parents criticized both the boundary study and the program analysis during Tuesday’s public comment period, with some arguing the boundary study included a number of data inconsistencies and that shifts in school attendance boundaries would disrupt community cohesion.
Several board members said they were taking the public testimony feedback into consideration as they moved forward with the program analysis and boundary study. Board President Julie Yang said she was also waiting for additional data from MCPS concerning financial impacts, community feedback and transportation.
“I understand this is a process, but I cannot underscore the importance for data-driven decisions,” Yang said.
