Smith's Final Proposal

Former Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith has a plan for how to select and appoint the county's school board.

The 12-member task force is scheduled to meet Thursday at 4 p.m. at the Randallstown Community Center.

In an Oct. 5 email obtained late Wednesday night, Smith proposes to other members a smaller, fully appointed school board nominated by a 25-member commission.

"This is my effort to flesh out a nominating commission approach," Smith wrote, concluding that he'd like comments on the idea before the group met Thursday.

Smith, who does not support any form of elected school board, successfully manged to have the task force kill the possibility that either a fully or partially elected school board option would be part of the panel's recommendations.

The five page document, emailed to task force members and other interested parties, would reduce the current board from 11 members (excluding the superintendent and the student member) to nine members.

All of the picks would be selected by the governor—two at-large and one each from the county's seven council districts.

All of the picks would be made based on recommendations of a 25-member school board nominating committee.

The committee would be made up of the following:

• Each of the five chairs of the Advisory Councils of the Board of Education in the five geographic areas in Baltimore County.
• The chair of the Career in Technology Education Advisory Council.
• The chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee for Gifted & Talented Education.
• President and vice president of the PTA Council of Baltimore County.
• The chair of the Special Education Advisory Committee.
• The president of the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce or designee.
• The president of the Owings Mills Corporate Roundtable or designee.
• The president of the Chesapeake Gateway Chamber of Commerce or designee.
• Three members (no current elected officials) selected by the Baltimore County Senate Delegation.
• Three members (no current elected officials) selected by the Baltimore County House Delegation.
• One member selected by the councilperson of each councilmanic district.
• A representative selected by the Teacher’s Association of Baltimore County.
• A representative selected by the local chapter of CASE.
• Two representatives selected by the Baltimore County executive.
• One representative selected by the NAACP.

You can read the rest of the proposal on the attached document.