MoCo Schools In Disarray As Report Faults Handling Of Staff Misconduct

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD — Montgomery County’s Office of the Inspector General issued a report Wednesday that found several deficiencies in the way Montgomery County Public Schools deals with complaints.

The OIG's report comes after MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight revealed in a statement earlier this week that the school board has asked her to resign. McKnight said she plans to fight to keep her job.

The OIG was asked by the Montgomery County Council to investigate how the school district handles sexual misconduct complaints after former principal Joel Beidleman was promoted despite being accused of sexual harassment and bullying over several years. Some of those complaints were not pursued.

The OIG “initiated this review in response to assertions that the inadequate response to alleged misconduct committed by former principal Dr. Joel Beidleman was caused in part by shortcomings in how complaints of employee wrongdoing are handled by Montgomery County Public Schools,” the inspector general’s office said in the report.

Beidleman, who had been principal of Farquhar Middle School, “is no longer an employee” of MCPS as of Wednesday, a schools spokesman told MoCo360 on Wednesday.

Beidleman had been on administrative leave since August. In a separate report, the OIG said he had engaged in bullying and harassment and violated MCPS’ Code of Conduct.

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In June 2023, Beidleman was promoted to principal of Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville. He was placed on leave by MCPS in August, after The Washington Post reported on complaints against him that had been submitted to the school district over the past seven years.

In a statement Wednesday, Montgomery County Council President Andrew Friedson, Vice President Kate Stewart and Education and Culture Committee Chair Will Jawando said they will meet in a joint audit and education and culture oversight committee meeting on Feb. 8 to discuss the report.

“The report provides the Board of Education, MCPS leadership, the Council and the public with an impartial evaluation and recommends multiple policy and procedure changes associated with investigating and handling allegations of wrongdoing,” the councilmembers said.

After reviewing the OIG's report, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said Wednesday during a news briefing that he still has questions on how the investigation concerning the promotion of former Beidleman was handled and why Board of Education members have asked McKnight to step down.

“The amount of information that we have right now obviously is minimal,” Elrich said, Montgomery County Media reported Wednesday.

“The school board hasn’t shared anything with us that would lead us to understand this,” Elrich said. “I think Dr. McKnight is entitled to know what the issues are” that led to her being asked to step down, he added, according to the Montgomery County Media report.

In its report, the OIG recommended that MCPS implement policies and procedures that address conducting and documenting investigations by the MCPS Department of Compliance and Investigations.

“Many of the same deficiencies we found were previously identified by other entities and reported to MCPS,” the report said. “Although informed of the concerns, MCPS failed to implement appropriate corrective actions.”

In a statement Wednesday, McKnight said she is "fully in alignment with the OIG’s recommendations, many of which I have already been working with my team to address by implementing dozens of corrective actions over the last several months — and I appreciate the OIG for acknowledging that progress in today’s report."

The Montgomery County Education Association teachers union said in response to the OIG's report that it is "continually disheartened and disgusted by the continuing revelations of corruption, malfeasance, and unsafe working conditions in MCPS."

"At a time when we should be working together to demand a budget that meets the actual needs of our students, we are constantly sidetracked with additional stories of MCPS’s mismanagement," Danillya Wilson, MCEA's secretary and vice president-elect, said in a statement Wednesday.

The OIG's report on MCPS complaint processing "makes clear that the superintendent and other top executives, either due to incompetence or willful avoidance of duty, allowed credible allegations of sexual harassment and bullying to go unaddressed," the teachers union said.

The Montgomery County Board of Education "must put a swift end to the chaos" by appointing "leaders who will work to address the challenges we face in our work each day, such as staffing shortages in special education and other crucial areas, unfilled substitute teaching positions and related unpaid class coverage, and concerns over a lack of covid leave," MCEA said.

"There’s ample evidence that changes in top leadership are needed if we are to restore trust in the system," the union said.

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