In part 1 of this series we reviewed the historical narrative for granting full-time pay to MCPS Board of Education members. The overarching theme for the pay increase is that the board members are doing full-time work for part-time pay.
Here is a map of the counties in the DC region. The ones shaded in red offer full-time pay for their boards of education.
If you’re using a screen reader, here’s the alt text: No county in the DC region considers their BoE members full-time employees. Even Fairfax County Public Schools, with more students and more employees than MCPS, grants their BoE members part-time pay.
Recall from Part 1 of this series that Delegates Vogel and Charkoudian introduced legislation to bump our BoE members to $124,000/$134,000, about double the amount recommended by a 2019 compensation commission. The only possible justification I could distill from the narrative is that the BoE members need to do more oversight following the Biedelman scandal (although Vogel and Charkoudian haven’t explicitly said that). If that is the justification, it’s nonsense. We have an army of full-time administrative bureaucrats at MCPS, and another army of bureaucrats at the teachers’ union, none of whom detected or escalated the sexual harassment. Why would paying seven more employees improve the oversight? Also, in 2019 presumably the BoE had its job description neatly defined; if oversight has since been added to their responsibilities, then what will be neglected? Nothing here is adding up except for the nepotism.
Lastly, BoE members are not supposed to do oversight. They are supposed to behave as part-time employees and smile for the head shots. If they feel they are overworked, if they have a strong sense of victim because they do full-time work for part-time pay, then we need to bust Maryland’s Largest School District into smaller independent school districts, something we’ve previously recommended. That might be an ego crusher to the BoE, but it would be a whole lot better for the parents, teachers, and students.
