Howard County School Board Election 2024: Meet Meg Ricks

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 Meg Ricks, candidate for HCPSS Board of Education District 1.

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? Meg Ricks

What position are you running for? Howard County Board of Education District One Member

What ways can people contact you with questions?

megricksforboe@gmail.com
facebook.com/megricksforboe
@megricksforboe on instagram

Campaign website? www.megricksforboe.com

Age as of election day? 43

Place of residence? Elkridge, MD

Family members? Married with three children

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government? No

Education? BA Anthropology

Occupation? Teacher’s Assistant at East Columbia Preschool

Previously held elected or appointed political positions? None

Why are you running for office? A decade and a half of advocacy and community service brought me the knowledge, experience, and motivation to serve my community and the young people of Howard County by running for an at-large seat on the Board in 2022 and now running for the District 1 seat. My goal is to have excellent schools providing a world-class education that prepares every student for a bright future. I am also committed and ready to build consensus with other Board members and funding partners to advocate for needed funding, while being a wise steward of taxpayer funds. I will also push for transparency and accountability, listen to stakeholders, and make data-driven decisions.

What are your top 3 priorities?

Helping all students succeed by- addressing knowledge gaps, connecting them to needed resources including mental health services, providing needed academic supports with fidelity, and ensuring access to needed materials and facilities that are appropriate and welcoming environments for learning.

Supporting our educators by - treating them fairly and with respect in contract negotiations, ensuring pay that doesn’t lag behind the cost of living and which reflects their years of service, education and expertise, setting them up for success including support in keeping cell phones from being a major distraction, and giving them what they need to do their jobs well.

Partnering with parents and community members by- rebuilding trust, listening, and making better decisions. There’s an aphorism that has been shared among lawyers for many years- "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table." Some on the Board in the past have seemed to take everyone coming to testify before the Board as just there to ‘pound the table’ especially if they disagreed with them, but there are many smart and thoughtful people in our county who are bringing facts to the table that need to be considered.

What do you believe is the most important issue facing the school board? The most important issue facing HCPSS is the budget, because it touches everything in our school system and every challenge we face. It directly impacts our ability to hire and retain the best teachers and staff in the face of a national teacher shortage. It impacts our ability to expand access to mental health resources for our students at a time when social and emotional issues are creating a crisis for our kids. This results in both behaviors that disrupt the learning environment as well as internalized impacts like anxiety and depression. It directly impacts our ability to meet our legal requirements to our students who should be receiving special education services but are often not getting what they need and what they are legally entitled to. Inadequate funding has also led to school overcrowding, which hurts our already vulnerable students the most, and to our long list of deferred maintenance, which could be hurting the health and safety of everyone in those buildings.

The Board must be united in asking for the funding that is needed for our schools. As a member of the Board, I intend to continue my advocacy for dedicated, additional revenue sources for our schools, for both the operating and capital budgets. The Board also needs to continue to be a check on the Superintendent to ensure that we are being good stewards of the funding we receive, making wise financial decisions, and entering into contracts that adequately protect our interests.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post? I am opposed to book bans or vouchers that drain desperately needed funding from our public schools and which do not help students in poverty or those with disabilities. I am not sympathetic to groups which promote these schemes. I am focused on the needs of all of our students. I have a long track record of testifying for the needs of not just my own community before the Board and the County. I have developed a deep familiarity with our school system’s operating budget through serving for the past two years on the Board’s Operating Budget Review Committee. I have spent many hours in our schools as a parent volunteer and in 15 years of PTA/PTSA leadership. I have also worked with students from preschool to college ages and currently work in the classroom with preschool students.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)? The bad decisions of past Boards have continued to impact far beyond the time in which they were made. Poor choices of school sites have led to long bus rides, imbalanced capacity utilization, and difficult redistrictings. Allowing a huge health fund deficit led to having to look for cuts year after year rather than being able to advance programs to address the needs of students. Lip service was given to equity as the Board created new high poverty school attendance areas. Last year’s bus fiasco hurt students and families that had to scramble to find a way to school and it shook the community’s trust in our school system.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform. What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job? My background in the preschool classroom and as a community leader, education advocate, and HCPSS parent have uniquely qualified me to serve on the Board. As a recipient of Free and Reduced Meals (FARMs) and other programs for families in poverty as a child, I personally experienced the importance and power of public education to change lives. Serving others in my community has been a life-long pursuit. I have followed and participated in the work of the Board for 15 years and am ready to bring my experience, creative problem solving, consensus building, and passion for education to this role. My time on the Operating Budget Review Committee (OBRC) and many years of PTA leadership deepened my understanding of the fiscal and other challenges we face. Those familiar with my leadership have described me as fair, calm, and level-headed. Serving as one of the co-chairs of last year’s OBRC, I had an opportunity to put into practice calm leadership and consensus building in what can sometimes be a fractious group because of its size, passion, and diversity of opinions, not to mention the difficulty of last year’s budget. I am ready to bring these needed skills to the Board.

How will you handle LGBTQ+ and racial issues brought before the school board? I am always going to stand up for every student. They should be at the center of every decision. My role as a Board Member will be to support the mission and vision of the school system and help to make it a reality for every student. For our students to learn, they must feel safe, and to feel safe, they must feel like they belong. Sometimes we miss the mark. We have to be willing to have difficult conversations. Everyone has biases and pretending we don’t will not make them go away. We must be willing to listen, to learn, and to act. We need to thoughtfully create and nurture a culture of inclusivity in every school and office. We must protect students from bullying, discrimination, or ostracization because of their race, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, family make up, or any other actual or presumed status or identity.

How will you handle book-banning issues brought before the school board? I support parents’ right to guide what their own children read, but no single person or group gets to dictate what every student has access to. I trust our media specialists to offer age appropriate materials in our school libraries. There is a process in place to get community feedback on all materials and to request re-evaluation, if there are concerns.

To prepare children for the future, we need to teach them both the good and the bad of our history. We want our students to learn important, age-appropriate lessons about the role
of race and racism in the shaping of America because it’s the best way to ensure the next generation doesn’t repeat the mistakes of our past. LGBTQ+ students should have the same freedom to study in a supportive learning environment as any other student, despite the attempts of some politicians to demonize them and to stoke fear for political gain.