Be Sure to Vote for BoE Members!

by Mark R. Adelman, Chair, MCCF Education Committee

When you go to the polls for the Primary (September 12) and General (November 7) Elections, be sure to exercise your right to help select members of the Montgomery County Board of Education (BoE). We believe that your votes for future members of the BoE are possibly the MOST important you will cast. The BoE and its staff provides oversight to the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) system and is responsible for the MCPS budget which, for FY2007, is almost two billion dollars - or about one half of the county budget. In addition to one student member (elected each April by the students in our school system), there are seven seats on the BoE: two at-large members and five district members. You can find more information about the BoE on its website: http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/boe/. This year, four of the seven seats are up for election (the other three will be up in the next electoral cycle), and EVERY REGISTERED VOTER GETS TO VOTE FOR ALL FOUR OF THOSE SEATS (the positions are non-partisan and the district designations are mainly to assure geographic diversity of representation on the BoE). Because there is commonly confusion about this point, we repeat: EVERY REGISTERED VOTER GETS TO VOTE FOR ALL FOUR OF THOSE SEATS. Using a 'facts sheet' available from the Montgomery County Board of Elections, we have excerpted information on the candidates for these seats and made it available on the Montgomery County Civic Federation website: (Click here).

The ballot for the Primary election (on September 12), will list only seats for which more than two candidates have filed; thus you will select, for the at-large and school district 5 seats, two candidates to appear on the General Election (November 7) ballot. School districts 1 (two candidates) and 3 (one candidate) will NOT appear on the Primary Election ballot, but WILL be on the General Election ballot in November. As you may know, two of the occupants of seats on the BoE that are contested in this cycle have chosen not to stand for re-election. Thus the composition of the Board is certain to change after this year's electoral results take effect. In mid-July, the Civic Federation Education Committee sent a Questionnaire to all Candidates for the BoE. It contained 12 questions, prepared by our committee with input from other delegates to the Civic Federation. In transmitting the questionnaire to the candidates, we placed no limits on the length of their answers, but urged brevity wherever possible. That questionnaire is also available on our website: (Click here). We received detailed responses from all but two candidates (one is running uncontested and chose not to respond; one chose to send a platform statement rather than answer the individual questions) and have posted those responses to our website, in two formats:

1. To the listing of the candidate information provided by the Board of Elections, we have added links to each candidate's responses: Click here.

2. We have prepared a composite file, in which each question is listed, followed by the responses of all candidates to that question: Click here.

In previous electoral cycles we sponsored BoE Candidate Forums, but found them only marginally effective in allowing large numbers of voters to become familiar with the candidates; hence this year we are testing the efficacy of the Questionnaire approach. We urge all voters to read the candidates' responses to our questions, as well as information available in their various flyers, mailings and/or websites. Neither the Civic Federation nor any of our committees endorses candidates running for any elective office. We are simply providing you with information about candidates for election to the BoE and urging you to go to the polls informed and prepared to vote for those candidates you believe will best serve our County. As we have stated in numerous published articles, it is the essence of the democratic process to select carefully from those who offer themselves for public service, to monitor what they do once elected, to provide them feedback as YOU deem appropriate, and to either re-elect those who have served the public well or to elect new candidates as events and your opinions dictate. We believe that an educated electorate is essential to the strength of our County (and our Country) and that our system of public schools is vital to the process by which our children become the educated - and informed - adults we all hope constitute our citizenry. Given these facts, we would argue that your votes for members of the BoE are the MOST important ones you will cast and we therefore urge you to go to the polls prepared to vote, with as much knowledge as possible, for the best available candidates running for election to this VITAL public body.