While the Montgomery County school system in Maryland deals with internal issues surrounding an Inspector General’s report and tensions between the superintendent and the Board of Education, the county council gets set to ask questions about school operations.
On Feb. 8, the council’s Audit and Education and Culture Committees will hold a joint hearing. The members will get a chance to ask Inspector General Megan Limarzi about her office’s analysis of the school system’s handling of complaints of employee misconduct.
Last week, the IG’s office released the second of two reports related to the school system. In the most recent report, the IG wrote that the school system doesn’t have a “comprehensive protocol addressing the receipt, evaluation, tracking and disposition of complaints.”
The report also referred to record-keeping within the MCPS Department of Compliance and Investigations as “chaotic” and noted that the school system had been made aware of deficiencies for handling complaints of misconduct in the past and “failed to implement appropriate corrective actions.”
In the same week the IG’s report came out, MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight released a statement saying that Board of Education members had indicated that they wanted her to “step away” from her job as superintendent. McKnight stated that there was no justification for the move.
On Monday, in a briefing with reporters, Montgomery County Council President Andrew Friedson was asked if, given the tensions between the school board and McKnight, the superintendent should be removed.
Friedson responded: “That’s a personnel matter between the Board of Education and the superintendent. I will say the issue needs to be resolved, and it needs to be resolved as quickly as possible because the school system needs stability.”
While the council’s oversight of the school system is primarily budgetary — it approves the budgets of county agencies — the council does have the authority to remove school board members under certain circumstances. If there’s a finding of “immorality,” “misconduct in office,” “incompetency” or “willful neglect of duty,” a board member could be removed.
Friedson was asked if there’s any move to have school board members removed, and told reporters that school board members are “duly elected officials,” and that there’s little appetite to overturn the will of voters. He continued, “First of all, I don’t think we’re there, and I think it would cause a tremendous amount of instability in an environment where we need more stability.”
“I think every elected official has a responsibility to be held accountable” and to “accept public scrutiny,” he said.
Regarding the upcoming hearing by the two council committees, Friedson said “We’re still working out exactly who will be in attendance,” but along with the Office of the Inspector General, he said, “I expect that we’ll have representatives from the Board of Education and MCPS leadership.”
“We’re going to have tough questions and we’re going to want people there who can answer them.”
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