Gov. Hogan’s School Board Has ZERO Public School Teachers
In response, MSEA supports bill to elect two teachers to the State Board.
Larry Hogan has amassed a considerable anti-public education record in his three-plus years as governor of Maryland through his budget proposals, legislation, and veto-power:
- In 2015, Gov. Hogan’s budget proposal slowed the growth of education funding — in effect, cutting — by $144 million. After the legislature reversed about $132 million of that cut, the governor used his authority to take away $68 million dedicated for schools that the legislature passed in its bipartisan budget.
- In 2016, Gov. Hogan again withheld $25 million for public schools that was passed in a bipartisan budget so he could use it as a bargaining chip to get legislative leaders to agree to a $37.5 million tax giveaway to one corporation — Northrop Grumman.
- After public school educators criticized the governor’s education funding cuts, he lashed out on Facebook and called them “union thugs.”
- In 2015 and 2016, Gov. Hogan proposed legislation to create a private school voucher program. While the legislature opposed the bill both times, the governor was able to use his budget authority to get it included in the budget bill. In his last two budgets, more than $10 million has been taken from public schools and sent to subsidize private school tuition.
- In 2017, Gov. Hogan vetoed the Protect Our Schools Act, legislation to ensure low-performing schools are not taken over by the state and handed over to privately managed operators through the state’s new Every Student Succeeds Act accountability system.
- Despite Gov. Hogan’s constant claim that he has record-funded education in each of his four years, his four budgets have increased education funding by less on average than the four budgets before he took office (proposed by then-Gov. Martin O’Malley).
But these aren’t the only ways that Gov. Hogan has held back progress in Maryland public schools. As governor, he has also appointed dozens of anti-public education advocates to the State Board of Education and other local boards of education across the state.
Hogan’s Appointments: Ideologues > Practitioners
Gov. Hogan’s State Board of Education currently has ZERO members with experience working in Maryland public schools. That’s right — the people he has chosen to create regulations and rules about Maryland schools have no first-hand experience in them.
Instead, the majority of his nine current appointments (he has left three vacant spots on the Board) have a demonstrated history of advocating for his education privatization agenda. They include:
A co-founder of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, founder of a Maryland KIPP charter school, and author of The Urban School System of the Future: Applying the Principles and Lessons of Chartering, a book on privatizing city school districts;
The former president of the Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank on education policy, and co-founder of EdisonLearning, a for-profit education management group;
A private school principal;
A board member of MarylandCAN, a school privatization advocacy group funded largely by Walmart’s Walton family and founded by Donald Trump’s education advisor; and
A former New York State Education Commissioner who authored his state’s Race to the Top Grant, ushering in a new era of standardized test-based teacher evaluations and charter school expansion (not to mention an era of severe drops in elementary school NAEP rankings in both math and English).
“Hogan…triggered complaints from…proponents of traditional public schools this year when he chose a leader in the charter school movement and other charter and private school advocates to join the State Board of Education.” — The Washington Post
Of course, these are the members of the State Board who made it through the Senate confirmation process. One of Gov. Hogan’s appointments last year, Brandon Cooper, withdrew his nomination after facing questions about his failure to pay taxes, a drink driving arrest, and failure to appear in court.
Cooper also fit into Gov. Hogan’s privatization ideology, having worked at the Institute for Justice, a pro-school privatization organization that calls itself “the nation’s preeminent courtroom defender of educational choice programs.”
In Maryland, the governor has also had the power to appoint many members of local boards of education — not just the state school board. Perhaps the most extreme example of Gov. Hogan’s use of appointments to push his right-wing ideology is Baltimore County’s Ann Miller.
HB154/SB739 Would Put Two Current Teachers on the State Board of Education
In response to the stunning lack of direct stakeholders on the State Board of Education, Del. Eric Ebersole — a former Howard County math teacher — and Sen. Rich Madaleno teamed up to introduce HB154/SB739, legislation that would put two current teachers and one parent on the Board.
The two teachers would be selected through an election by their public school teacher colleagues. So while some might try to argue that this bill gives “the teachers’ union” two seats on the board, that’s not true. This is the same process used to select teacher members by the state retirement board.
As we’ve covered extensively on MSEA Newsfeed, there is a lot of work needed to rebuild morale, autonomy, and voice in Maryland’s teaching profession. MSEA sees this legislation as an important signal to teachers that their voice matters in education policy decisions.
“Adding two dedicated seats on the State Board for certified teachers is one of the best ways to empower educators to lead and address the lack of autonomy and input in policy decisions felt by teachers in the state.” — MSEA President Betty Weller
This could be an important start to a new era of smarter, more informed education decision-making. And there’s no better place to start than the top education policymaking body in the state.
