Howard County School Board Election 2024: Meet Trent Kittleman

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — Residents will vote this fall to elect new members of the Howard County Board of Education. Patch invited each candidate running for a seat on the school board to complete a questionnaire about their campaign priorities, their views and themselves. Below you'll find the unedited, verbatim responses from Trent Kittleman, candidate for HCPSS Board of Education District 5.

Early voting runs from Oct. 24 through Oct. 31 and Election Day is Nov. 5. More information about voting locations, registration, mail-in ballots and dropbox ballots is posted here.

The Howard County Board of Education consists of seven members elected to four-year terms. Five members are elected by district and two members are elected at large. Here are the people who filed for candidacy with the State Board of Elections for the Howard County Board of Education.

District 1
Andre Gao, Ellicott City
Meg Ricks, Ellicott City

District 2
Larry Doyle, Columbia
Antonia Watts, Elkridge

District 3
Jolene Mosley, Columbia

District 4
Julie Kaplan, Fulton
Jen Mallo, Columbia

District 5
Andrea Chamblee, Clarksville
Trent Kittleman, West Friendship

What is your name? Trent Kittleman

What position are you running for? Howard County Board of Education, District 5

What ways can people contact you with questions? trentkittleman@verizon.net or through my website, trentkittleman.com

Campaign website? TrentKittleman.com

Age as of election day? Over 50

Place of residence? West Friendship, MD

Family members? Two daughters; two sons-in-law; ten grandchildren (5 of whom attend Howard County Public Schools) plus a wide extended family, six of which families live next door on our farm.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government? Not at the moment, but one of my daughters taught in Howard County for 10 years, and stepson, Allan Kittleman, is a former State Senator and Howard County Executive

Education? J.D., Order of the Coif, obtained at the University of Maryland School of Law

Occupation? Currently . . . campaigning.

Previously held elected or appointed political positions? Member of Maryland House of Delegates, 2015 - 2022

Why are you running for office? Because I am passionate about education. Because eight years in the Legislature brought me face to face with the depth and breadth of problems inherent in the current state of public education. And because I have five grandchildren in Howard County Public Schools. The Board of Education needs a knowledgeable, experienced, leader who knows how to read a contract and what questions to ask of staff. Too many avoidable problems are happening. Students should be transported to school on time, in buses and not have to walk up to two miles; and they should feel safe once in school. Deferring maintenance is unacceptable; our students should never have to endure schools with mold, mildew, bad air quality, & too few bathrooms! Housing our students in over 250 “temporary” relocatable classrooms due to a lack of capacity in our school buildings isn’t reasonable, particularly when we could use a public-private-partnership to build six schools in two years - as Prince George’s County did. And the persistent failure to meet the needs of our special education students must come to an end. While Howard County still stands as a premier public school system, our academic scores are falling behind those of other counties. I want to see that this stops, and that our schools - just like our students -- are once again the best and the brightest.

What are your top 3 priorities?

1. Academics: the focus of each school is, first, to ensure students can read, can write, and understand basic mathematics
2. Safety: Students are safe both travelling from home to school and while in school.
3. Special Education: Although HCPSS works hard to educate every student, we need to do better.

What do you believe is the most important issue facing the school board? The budget ultimately determines the scope of our ability to successfully educate our children. Right now, that budget is insufficient. The Board must direct a complete and detailed review of how the budget is constructed to determine 1) where there are ways to allocate funds more effectively, (2) where there is overlap or waste, (3) if we are maximizing revenues from federal & state governments, from available grants, and from using programs such as the Public Private Partnership to stretch our ability to build schools quickly.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post? My hands-on experience running large organizations, overseeing multi-million-dollar budgets, and successfully building consensus to achieve results. I’ve served on a number of Boards of Directors and as CEO of the Maryland Transportation Authority, my “boss” was a Board of Directors, so I have experience determining how much direction and involvement the Board should exercise as opposed to micro-managing the Superintendent.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)? I am running in an open seat.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Common Sense Student Safety
• Provide on-time bus transportation
• Don’t schedule children to WALK along major roads or elsewhere the route is predictably dangerous
• Have Student Resource Officers (SROs) in all schools
Recognize and Respect Parents and Communities
· Redistricting schools should be kept to a minimum and should focus on keeping communities together.
· Acknowledge and respect parents’ rights as the primary drivers of their children’s education.
Age-Appropriate Education
To the extent that the topic of sex and gender education is taught in elementary grades, these schools should require parent approval or allow for an individual opt-out
Focus on Fundamentals
Howard County has some great schools, and we want to keep them that way, both physically and academically. HCPSS should:
• Fund and perform regular school building maintenance
• Focus on academics, first.
Support Education Options
We have an obligation to educate every child, including those with severe disabilities. HCPSS’s current system is not working. HCPSS must take more advantage of available resources such as the publicly funded MANSEF schools that educate children with disabilities.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION: I’ve volunteered as a judge for our 5th-grade Simulated Congressional Hearing program for 13 years, judging numerous schools each year. I write a monthly Newsletter titled A Voice for Parents, and I am a current member of HCPSS Resource Reevaluation Committee. As a Delegate, I participated in designing the Kirwin BLUEPRINT, and every day during session, constituents talked to me about all facets of education. The most compelling conversations were with Special Education teachers who came down every year begging for relief from the constantly-expanding clerical requirements of their job.
FINANCIAL EXPERIENCE: As CEO of the Maryland Transportation Authority, I was responsible for the $3.4 million operating budget and the over $6 billion six-year capital budget, giving me a useful understanding of how to maximize budget dollars.
LEADERSHIP: As Deputy Secretary of Transportation, I created and guided a stakeholder committee that raised the paratransit on-time pickup from 75% to over 90%. As CEO of the MdTA, I was able to get the Bay Bridge’s third lane reopened before the summer rush. In both roles, I was an instrumental part of getting the ICC (Route 200) built.
CONCENSUS-BUILDER: I served for 18 months on the “Montgomery County Transportation Task Force II.” We were given an almost impossible task of arriving at consensus among 34 members ranging from people focused solely on the environment to people focused solely on constructing roads. Getting a decisive majority vote to build the ICC was my greatest achievement! Moreover, as a Delegate, I spent eight years successfully working with legislators across the aisle

How will you handle LGBTQ+ and racial issues brought before the school board? Depending on the issue, I would listen closely to all of the testimony, ask probing questions, discuss the issue with other Board members, carefully consider their comments, and, ultimately, vote or recommend in accordance with what I believe best complies with HCPSS policies. This is how I would handle issues on LGBTQ+ and race as well as issues on any other subject.

How will you handle book-banning issues brought before the school board? Having a book removed from a school library must go through an extensive process before it gets to the Board. A request from a parent with a child in the school is sent to the Principal who will try to resolve the issue. If the Principal cannot resolve the issue, the Principal will forward the request to the Superintendent who will refer it to the re-reevaluation committee on which I serve. The RRC reviews the material and votes on whether the material should be retained or pulled. If the parent is not happy with the recommendation of the RRC, the parent can appeal the matter to the Board of Education. The Board has the final say. The Board seldom, if ever, disagrees with the Committee recommendation.

Nonetheless, after reviewing the book, the recommendations, and the reasons for the decisions, if I believe the decisions failed to consider any important factor, I would raise this with the Superintendent at the Board meeting. If I felt strongly that the decision was wrong, I might also ask the parents who initiated the request to attend as well, and I might ask for more information or even a reconsideration. Ultimately, however, I would need to convince a majority of the Board in order to get the decision reversed.

The ongoing debate surrounding the term "book banning" has sparked significant discussion and controversy in recent times. Many parents are advocating for the removal of specific books from school libraries, citing concerns over what they perceive as explicitly sexual content. It is not unreasonable to have pornography – defined as explicitly sexual material “that serves no redeeming social purpose” --removed from the schools.

However, this debate takes a complex turn when considering the actions of those who vehemently oppose the concept of book banning. A notable instance occurred in 2021 when a coalition of liberal educators, experts, and academics successfully pressured Dr. Seuss Enterprises to halt the sales and publication of several beloved children's titles by Dr. Seuss. The decision affected six notable works, including "The Cat’s Quizzer," "McElligot’s Pool," "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," and "Scrambled Eggs Super." This situation illustrates an arguably double standard in the discourse surrounding book banning

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions? I have expressed my views on most of the major topics the Board has considered this year in my 14 Newsletters, A Voice for Parents, all of which are posted on my website, TrentKittleman.com. And during eight years in the Legislature, I weighed in on a number of education bills, including Kirwan, the bill that produced the Blueprint. There were many options included in that bill, but it failed to address the greatest education inequity in the state. How is it fair that families with higher incomes have the wherewithal and thus the option to take their students out of failing schools, or schools that were closed during COVID, while families with lower incomes have no options. Many of their children are destined to remain in schools that fail year after year! Where is the equity in that?