North Point High School, Waldorf: At the Charles County Board of Education’s Monday night work meeting, Vice-Chair Bobbie Wise summed up the Board’s feelings concisely. “We are elected officials just as [the Commissioners] are; and we need to be consulted.”
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Photos courtesy |
Board members’ reactions to the county commissioners’ seemingly unilateral decision to consolidate information technology and staff training departments across the BoE, County & Sheriff’s Office were heated and unified while Superintendent of Schools Jim Richmond spoke at Monday night’s BoE work meeting. The Commissioners stated that goal during last Wednesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting and again in a widely distributed press release afterward.
While Mr. Richmond agrees that he and Commissioner Cooper mentioned sharing resources during an off-the-record type conversation several years ago; Richmond insists that the issue was a casual tossing out of ideas, and absolutely not a formal declaration of intent. Further, the idea was for partnerships and the sharing of mutually beneficial ideas/resources like the school system has done with many other organizations around the area. Richmond assured the other Board members that the conversation was never about consolidation.
He’d had to assure his staff as well. Although Commissioner Cooper did call Superintendent Richmond the morning after the announcement to give him a “heads up,” it was too little, too late. The news was already in the public ear. Before rumors reached epic proportions, Richmond called together his IT and Teacher Development staff and also assured them that he’d never discussed consolidation of any school departments with Commissioner Cooper. Board members Maura Cook and Pam Pedersen expressed disappointment with the county’s poor communication skills. Richmond and Vice-Chair Wise agreed that preliminary research and communication were not handled properly by the county government.
The Board of Education felt that even proposing to hire a consultant to consider consolidation was premature. They felt they’d like an inventory of the school system’s resources first. The Board didn’t see an outside consultant as someone who could usefully help identify common areas among the organizations which could consolidate. In fact, Assistant Superintendent Paul Balides contradicts County Attorney Fink’s claim that a consultant is needed because previous employee workgroups failed. He insists that no such workgroups or fo