Nobody involved in the promotion of Montgomery County, Maryland, Principal Joel Beidleman violated a school system policy or engaged in intentional misconduct when he was promoted earlier this year while under investigation for harassment and bullying, according to a report released Thursday.
Maryland’s largest school system released the heavily-redacted, 29-page report looking into how Beidleman was promoted while being investigated. That’s after staff and community members said the report’s release would be essential to restoring trust.
Beidleman was promoted during an ongoing investigation because “key decision-makers did not exercise enough diligence to ascertain important details about the investigation,” the report found. Members of the leadership team knew about the allegations but didn’t try to find out specific details or how Beidleman could be disciplined.
Those decision-makers also didn’t notify the Board of Education about the circumstances, the report said. Moving forward, At-Large Board Member Karla Silvestre said at a meeting Thursday that the board will have more oversight for the process involving appointees.
“We have always asked questions about credentials and about making good matches
with communities, and we relied on the administration to fully vet any candidate
recommended to the board for approval,” Silvestre said.
The full report’s release comes about a month after the school system released a summary of key findings. Those included things such as how the promotion process doesn’t have a mechanism for someone to identify whether a candidate for a promotion or transfer is under investigation.
Beidleman was poised to become the new principal at Paint Branch High School, a promotion from his role as principal at Farquhar Middle School. A Washington Post report revealed that Beidleman made threats, bullied and retaliated against employees.
A person whose name is redacted in the full report altered the timeline of the investigation into Beidleman, which violates the school system’s employee code of conduct, the report said. However, the report concluded that altering the timeline didn’t have an impact on Beidleman’s promotion.
WTOP has contacted the school system to ask whether the person who changed the timeline has been disciplined.
“Following a careful review of the report, I believe that the public could see what I have seen: that there are holes in the system that we need to fix and that there is a need for accountability,” schools Superintendent Monifa McKnight said.
The school system didn’t formally investigate several complaints, the report said, and after learning about the investigation into Beidleman and inquiries from The Washington Post, Beidleman wasn’t promptly placed on administrative leave, and the board wasn’t told about the issues at its July 20, 2023 meeting.
“The decision to place [redacted] on administrative sixteen days after [redacted] learned about the investigation and [redacted] was due to the imminent media coverage and detailed inquiries by the Washington Post in early August 2023 about [redacted] alleged misconduct and not due to the investigation or [redacted],” the report says.
Responding to some community members’ concerns that board emails are deleted, Silvestre said, “the Board wants to reassure you that email communications sent to the BOE are not deleted. We retain these emails and they can be accessed. Although there is a general one-year retention policy in MCPS for emails that does not apply to the Board’s email.”
In a statement, Montgomery County Council member Will Jawando said the report’s release won’t affect other ongoing investigations. The Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General’s investigation continues, he said.
The redacted Jackson Lewis report is available online.
