Alexandra Robbins substitute-teaches in Montgomery County Public Schools, in a cluster separate from the ones described in this article.
This article, originally published at 10:57 a.m. Jan. 26, 2024, has been updated with additional information.
On the heels of a Jan. 12 MoCo360 report that Montgomery County Public Schools senior leadership retaliated against MCPS investigator Khalid Walker by removing him from his job in the fall, MCPS has reinstated him, Walker said.
The Department of Compliance and Investigations coordinator told MoCo360 earlier this month that he found “stone cold sexual harassment” during an internal investigation of Farquhar Middle School principal Joel Beidleman. But Walker told MoCo360 he was instructed to reverse his findings and rewrite his draft after Beidleman was promoted to be principal of Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville. His claims were corroborated by an investigation commissioned by the school board from Baltimore-based law firm Jackson Lewis, according to a heavily redacted version of the firm’s report that the board released to the public Oct. 12.
MCPS officials retaliated against Walker after he told external investigators about the reversal, according to Walker and a discrimination-based-on-retaliation complaint he filed Nov. 8 with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. MCPS “has continuously subjected me to retaliatory harassment in the form of, but not limited to refusing to address threatening emails that were sent to me in relation to Washington Post articles, requesting my work laptop, and then restricting me from essential work-related activities,” Walker alleged in the complaint.
The complaint also claimed that Chief of Human Resources and Development April Key retaliated against Walker by “demoting me to Administrator on Special Assignment, removing the majority of my job duties, placing me in an undesirable work location without a professional office, and then severely reducing my wages [by rescinding his raise]. Finally, MCPS continues to retaliate against me by refusing to reinstate me to the Compliance Coordinator position in the Department of Compliance and Investigations.”
Key did not respond to a request for comment.
News of the reinstatement comes two days after Montgomery County Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi released a report condemning the district for failures to address disarray in its investigations. The report did not explore how the system promoted Beidleman in spite of the allegations and internal investigation.
Walker told MoCo360 that he would return to his former job on Monday. “I am looking forward to returning to DCI,” he said. “The recent OIG report highlighted many issues that some of us in the office had voiced concerns about for a long time. I am very much looking forward to participating in making all of the recommended changes.”
MCPS spokesperson Chris Cram confirmed Friday afternoon in an email, “Khalid Walker is an active employee, assigned to the MCPS Department of Compliance and Investigations. He begins this role on Monday Jan. 29.”
Beidleman is no longer a district employee as of Wednesday, Cram said in an emailed statement that day. Beidleman had been placed on leave Aug. 4 and stopped receiving pay Dec. 18.
Beidleman, who has previously denied many of the allegations against him, could not be reached for comment.
The OIG investigation found that DCI’s record keeping was in “chaotic condition” and the department did not have formal policies for handling investigations of misconduct.“
“The DCI director principally retained the task of determining how to handle most complaints. We found little documentation noting what factors were considered when assessing complaints, and no consistent process to document decisions and dispositions,” Limarzi wrote. Two former employees told the OIG that “the director would often ‘downplay or minimize’ allegations.”
Michaele Simmons, the DCI director at the time of the Beidleman investigation, assigned Walker to investigate a Farquhar social studies teacher’s Feb. 3 sexual harassment, discrimination and workplace bullying complaint, which included 20 allegations of Beidleman’s misconduct since 2019. Walker found that Beidleman had violated district sexual harassment policy and submitted his draft findings to Simmons on June 12, according to an email obtained by MoCo360. His investigation found “a preponderance of the evidence to support” some of the social studies teacher’s claims, according to the Jackson Lewis report.
However, Walker told MoCo360 that on July 11 — two weeks after MCPS promoted Beidleman — Simmons entered his office with a red pen and a hard copy of his draft, and instructed him to change his finding. Walker said he protested the order. The Jackson Lewis report, which confirmed that the June 12 draft was changed “on or about July 11, 2023,” suggested that the change was due to two concerns regarding the evidence for Walker’s initial findings.
Simmons, who did not respond to a request for comment, is no longer employed by the district, according to Cram.
Simmons later backdated the change of finding in an investigation timeline to June 26, the day before Beidleman’s promotion, Walker told MoCo360. Jackson Lewis found that the timeline was modified “in violation of MCPS Employee Code of Conduct, which prohibits submitting incorrect or false information to MCPS and requires employees to act honestly in the completion of their job duties.”
On July 26, Simmons instructed Walker to send a letter out “today” to the social studies teacher; she attached the letter to an email obtained by MoCo360. The letter stated that “the evidence does not support a finding” that Beidleman violated sexual harassment policy.
In an Aug. 11 article revealing that MCPS had received at least 18 complaints about Beidleman’s alleged misconduct, The Post reported that Walker had signed the letter. Walker said that as a result, he received negative and threatening communications from readers. The article prompted investigations by Jackson Lewis and the inspector general. Over the next several months, according to Walker and his MCCR complaint, MCPS leaders retaliated against him because he told investigators about the process. Further, he said the district took no steps to publicly absolve him despite the confirmation in the Jackson Lewis report, which was released to MCPS Sept. 8, that he did not make the decision to clear Beidleman of the allegations.
Walker said he learned he would be reinstated from a memo that Key sent him Thursday via her secretary. According to the MCPS job description for Walker’s position, as a DCI compliance coordinator he will manage complaints of workplace bullying and harassment, among a long list of other responsibilities.
The inspector general’s report said the district was warned four times since 2019 that DCI, which is tasked with investigating harassment, workplace bullying and other employee misconduct, had significant deficiencies, but, “Although informed of the concerns, MCPS failed to implement appropriate corrective actions.” Limarzi wrote, “The importance of properly assessing complaints cannot be overstated” and that DCI investigations “have the potential to impact people’s livelihood, mental health, and feelings of being heard.”
A second Farquhar teacher whose retaliation complaint against Beidleman was denied last year said that she agreed with Limarzi’s assessment. “I absolutely did not feel heard. I genuinely felt like MCPS didn’t care about us teachers. They don’t care about our wellbeing,” she said. “For a long time I considered, ‘Do I even want to be a teacher anymore?’ because they were treating me that way.”
Following MoCo360’s Jan. 12 report, several elected officials said they were disturbed by the district’s reported instruction to Walker to change his finding and alleged retaliation against him, as revelations about the fallout from the Beidleman scandal continue. “This has been one of the darkest episodes that I can recall in our County. And it’s all happening during one of the most challenging times in our school system’s history,” Councilmember Gabe Albornoz (D-At-large), Education and Culture Committee member, told MoCo360 Friday. “I hope that we can learn from this, support everyone impacted and make sure it never happens again.”
Alexandra Robbins, a freelance journalist, is the author of “The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession” and other books about education. This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.