County school board candidates discussed issues ranging from whether police officers should be stationed in schools to whether parents should be allowed to opt out their children from lessons involving LGBTQ+ inclusive books during a forum Wednesday night sponsored by a local group that opposes the teaching of critical race theory.
About 70 people attended the forum hosted by United Against Racism in Education (UARE) at the Sandy Spring Volunteer Fire Department station. UARE is opposed to the teaching of critical race theory, 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.
Of the 14 candidates running for three seats (At-large, District 2 and District 4) in the May 14 primary election, six candidates attended:
- At-large: Sharif Hidayat, Rita Montoya and Fitzgerald Mofor
- District 2: Brenda Diaz and Ricky Mui
- District 4: Bethany Mandel
The three incumbents who are running for re-election–board Vice President Lynne Harris (At-large), board member Rebecca Smondrowski (District 2) and board member Shebra Evans (District 4)–did not attend the forum.
Other candidates who did not attend are At-large candidates Melissa Kim and Jonathan Long, District 2 candidates Aby Thioye and Natalie Zimmerman and District 4 candidate Laura Stewart.
During the discussion, several candidates suggested that Montgomery County Public Schools should reinstate its school resource officer (SRO) program, which stationed officers in high schools.
Hidayat, a former county police officer who served for nearly 23 years, said he witnessed the benefits of the SRO program in the connections that the officers built with their school communities.
“You want to have those types of relationships where they don’t have a problem with the police, they love the police, they work with the police, they give information to the police to prevent incidents from happening,” Hidayat said.
“It’s not very popular to have this support for the police. But I don’t care. I don’t care. It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “You should concern yourself about doing the right thing versus trying to do the most popular thing.”
At the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, the county removed police officers from inside schools and replaced SROs with community engagement officers (CEO) who are stationed off of school grounds but are assigned to respond to calls at nearby schools.
Diaz, a former Gaithersburg High School social studies teacher who now teaches at Fusion Global Academy (an online learning group), said she found it helpful to have an SRO at school when she taught for MCPS.
“It got hectic at times [at school],” she said. “So the school resource officers are there to prioritize safety. They are there to establish relationships with the students, they are there to establish relationships with the community, and that is what we need.”
Candidates also discussed whether parents should have the right to opt their children out from instruction if the topics or themes go against their religious beliefs or morals – an issue related to the use of several LGBTQ+ inclusive books in the elementary English language arts curriculum.
Mofor, a legal assistant and Brookeville resident who says he’s running because he wants to quell political polarization on the board, said the lack of an opt-out option for parents is “draconian.” But he said he doesn’t support the eradication of the inclusive curriculum.
“If I was a member of the Board of Education, I would advocate for this curriculum to be instituted in the Health and Family Life curriculum,” Mofor said. “We have to respect religious freedom in our county.”
Diaz pledged to listen to families that wish to opt their children out of the instruction and teachers who may be concerned with the curriculum.
She said teachers are being made “middlemen” when it comes to the opt-out issue and are not “trained to handle the sorts of questions that little children will be making when they read these books.”
The ongoing problem of student drug use and opioid overdoses drew various ideas from candidates on how the school system can deal with the problems.
Mui, who lives in Rockville, said that he didn’t want to see the school system “fall to chaos” due to student drug use and suggested that bringing SROs back into schools can help with the problem. He also mentioned holding more student events with speakers who have first-hand experience with the opioid epidemic.
“These are things we can learn without having to go through it ourselves,” Mui said.
Mandel, a conservative writer and commentator who homeschools her school-aged children, said MCPS has been “focusing on all the wrong issues” by using health seminars to combat the issue and needs to be having age-appropriate conversations with all students.
“We need to have honest conversations with kids about what the risks are,” Mandel said. “And when there are deaths in the county we need to have age-appropriate conversations with kids hand-in-hand with parents.”
Montoya, PTA president at North Chevy Chase Elementary School and a former juvenile public defender, agreed with Mandel about having honest conversations with students about drugs. She also mentioned the need to teach students about cannabis now that recreational use of the drug is legal in the state.
“I’ve been trying to get some sort of cannabis education out to parents because there is a legalized industry here. It’s happening whether anybody likes it or not,” Montoya said.
She also mentioned continuing to promote peer-to-peer education programs for students to discuss and learn about substance abuse.
“As much as we all would like to think that our children will listen to us, a lot of times it’s better if it’s their own peers talking about these challenges,” she said. “… Kids receive information better from other kids. So, I think that’s what we want to do also is empower our youth.”
At the end of the forum, candidates answered questions from the audience and those that had been submitted online. A Sherwood High School teacher submitted a question asking candidates how they would approach the “lack of accountability and discipline” in schools.
Hidayat said that if elected, he would immediately ban students’ cell phone use during instructional time. Diaz did not explicitly agree with Hidayat but said the board should take a stance on student cell phone use and develop consequences for students who misuse their phones.
Montoya said she understands why parents want their children to have cell phones in schools due to health issues and the need to communicate about transportation and during emergencies. She suggested that a contract with parents and students that can set phone use boundaries and lay out the responsibilities of having a phone could be a potential solution.
When the forum ended, Dee Reuben, a leader at UARE, told those in attendance that UARE would use information from the forum to determine which candidates to endorse.