This article, originally published at 4:48 p.m. on April 12, 2024, was updated at 10:54 a.m. on April 13, 2024, to correct that Board of Education member Shebra Evans is running for her third term. It was updated at 11:43 p.m. on April 14, 2024, to correct the spelling of the forum moderator’s name, Tonia Bui.
Candidates for three open seats on the Montgomery County Board of Education discussed issues ranging from the teen mental health crisis and the racial achievement gap to school safety and the role of parental input in schools during a virtual forum Thursday night.
Out of the 14 candidates running for three seats on the school board in the May 14 primary election, 13 attended the forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County:
- At-large: school board member Lynne Harris, Sharif Hidayat, Melissa Kim, Fitzgerald Mofor and Rita Montoya. Jonathan Long did not attend.
- District 2: Brenda Diaz, Ricky Mui, school board member Rebecca Smondrowski (Dist. 2), Aby Thioye and Natalie Zimmerman
- District 4: school board member Shebra Evans, Bethany Mandel and Laura Stewart
Tonia Bui, co-founder of Asian American Mobilize, Organize, Vote and Empower (AAMOVE), moderated Thursday night’s discussion. AAMOVE is a Maryland-based organization promoting civic participation and diversity. Candidates were given 30 seconds to respond to each question and one minute for a closing statement.
Teen mental health crisis
When asked how they would address the impact of the teen mental health crisis on Montgomery County Public Schools students, many candidates mentioned the lingering impacts and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. They said teens need to feel connected to their community through extracurricular programs and school partnerships with local nonprofit organizations to provide counseling and empowerment opportunities.
Zimmerman, who’s running for the District 2 seat, said a large factor in the mental health crisis stems from MCPS not meeting the nationally recommended ratios for counselors, psychologists and social workers in its schools.
“Not only are we understaffed, but our staffing ratios aren’t meeting what’s nationally recommended,” she said.
Zimmerman also mentioned that she was interested in offering excused mental health days and increasing peer-to-peer support groups for students. MCPS students are currently allowed to take mental health days off from school as sick days, which are excused absences.
Kim, who’s running for the at-large seat, said the school board must “make sure that we’re creating programs to get [teens] engaged.
“Students need to feel like they belong in our school system and that they matter,” Kim said. “They need to feel known by other teachers as well as adults and students.”
Mandel, who’s running for the District 4 seat, said she disagreed with other candidates who pointed to COVID-19 as a main factor in the teen mental health crisis. Mandel said that the pandemic was not the issue, but instead the district’s response to the pandemic, which resulted in virtual learning for the majority of the 2020-2021 school year.
“It told students that school is non-essential and that they are unimportant. They were put last, and it’s time for people in our school district to start with our families and students first,” she said.
Closing the achievement gap
Candidates also focused on how they would approach closing the ongoing achievement gap between white and Asian students and Black and brown students.
“We need to be using up to date data and resources that are equitably distributed across the county for the kids who need them the most,” said Smondrowski, who is running for her fourth term representing District 2. “We need to be making sure that we’re targeting support systems and really evaluating on a regular basis the needs of our children as our county continues to change.”
Stewart, who’s running for the District 4 seat, said a key approach would be expanding pre-kindergarten – which is a main goal of the state Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform bill passed in 2018.
Universal pre-kindergarten “needs to be funded by the state as well,” she said.
Stewart also said the district must begin “to work out an early warning system and intervention teams” for parents whose students who are falling behind and “close the tutoring gap by partnering with nonprofits.”
Harris, the at-large incumbent running for her second term, emphasized the importance of providing advanced programming and career opportunities across county schools.
“I am a firm believer that we need to completely rethink the way we provide opportunities and programs in the system, and that every single great opportunity MCPS provides needs to be truly geographically accessible to every student,” she said. “So, no matter where you live, you can get there without having to get on a bus for an hour or more and it’s not a barrier.”
Mui echoed Harris’ sentiment and said that he would make sure that Career & Technical Education facilities and programs are dispersed throughout the county so students wouldn’t need to travel far to participate.
School safety
School safety has been at the forefront of community and school board conversations in recent months. When candidates were asked how they would work to ensure the safety of all MCPS schools and their position on having police officers in schools, many noted that they wanted more data on the current Community Engagement Officer program and called for strengthening the relationship between schools, administrators, students and police.
Beginning in the 2021-2022 school year MCPS removed its school resource officers (SROs) – police officers who were stationed at county high schools – and implemented its Community Engagement Officer program, in which police officers patrol schools within a cluster but do not remain inside school buildings.
“What I believe needs to happen is that the community engagement officer needs to interact with the principals and the security team currently at the school,” said Evans, the District 4 incumbent running for her third term. “Making certain that they’re building relationships so our families and students know and can feel safe in the schools.”
Hidayat, who says he has more than 20 years of experience as a county police officer, expressed his support for reinstating the SROs at schools.
“We should start with being honest about the SRO program,” said Hidayat, who is running for the at-large seat. “The SROs were seeing the students and were valuing the students. That’s the reality of the program. They built great, wonderful relationships.”
Diaz, who is running for the District 2 seat, echoed Hidayat’s sentiment and said she was “deeply disappointed in the board when they decided to ignore the [Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals (MCAAP)] recommendation to keep SROs in the school buildings.”
“When I was teaching at Gaithersburg High School, I saw how the SROs built relationships with students and with teachers and kept our building safe. I want to see the SROs come back,” she said.
Role of parental input
Another contentious topic was parental input and whether parents should be able to opt-out their children from the instruction and materials that they object to or consider inappropriate. After the school board strengthened its stance last year that parents would not be allowed to opt-out their children from LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula, families protested last summer and have submitted testimony opposing the policy at nearly every board meeting since the decision was made.
Incumbents Harris, Smondrowski and Evans stood by the board’s stance on its no opt-out policy. Evans said she sees an opportunity to have more conversations with parents and families who favor an opt-out policy to “find out where our interests align and then to disagree in a better way.”
Hidayat, who disagrees with the policy, said the school board has chosen “to take an abrasive approach to people of faith” with its decision.
“If you’re really about diversity and inclusion, that includes people of faith and I think the Board of Education should respect that,” he said.
Thioye, who’s running for the District 2 seat, said she wants the school board to adopt an opt-out policy. “I am against the fact that MCPS is removing the parent’s right and to allow the kids to be taught something that is against their religion or conscience,” she said
Mofor, running for the at-large seat, also “emphatically” supports parents having the ability to opt out their children from instruction or materials that go against their beliefs. But he said he doesn’t support the removal of inclusive curriculum and suggested it should be added to the health curriculum.
“Parents subsidize the educational system,” Mofor said. “It’s tyrannical to demand that parents fund the education system and not allow them to have an impact within the curriculum.”
View the full virtual forum at the League of Women Voters on YouTube.