My mother is a retired Maryland public school teacher. When she was a young teacher back in the ‘70s, she was the newspaper adviser in the high school where she taught foreign language. In 1975, two years after the landmark Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, her students wanted to write a piece in the school newspaper about sex education, birth control, and abortion. Believing strongly in the First Amendment, my mother allowed them to write and publish the piece despite such topics being t...
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education
<p>Howard County (Maryland) blog posts covering matters related to education, specifically public education and its importance to society.</p>
Drawing Red Lines
The esteemed moderator of Howard County Neighbors United, who is locally famous for his verbosity and pedantry, recently posted this uncharacteristically terse criticism of District 4 Board of Education candidate Jen Mallo. He took issue with Ms. Mallo’s statement in a recent candidate forum that “During redistricting, we saw groups that wanted to draw red lines around certain communities,” his objection being that the use of a phrase that describes racist housing policy perpetuates the “divis...
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It’s Time to Vote, Howard County
Ballots are beginning to arrive in mailboxes, and ballot drop boxes are in place. It’s time to vote, Howard County, but please read this first.
Today, the League of Women Voters of Howard County held a candidate forum for our local Board of Education candidates, a prime opportunity to watch all the candidates as a group debate several important topics. The candidates’ performances so perfectly embodied what I’ve been saying about them all year, so I’m going to present a debate analysis and...
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(River Hill) Money Makes the World Go ‘Round
I updated this piece on October 24.
In an election year, scrutiny of campaign finance reports is nothing new. People want to know who is donating cash and gifts to candidates and why. This year, a small subset of Howard County residents, still upset about last year's school redistricting process, are convinced that greedy real estate developers are pumping cash into Board of Education campaigns in exchange for influence. The conspiracy theory is that the $650 donated by Howard Hughes is b...
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District 4: Say No to Sezin Palmer (Part 3)
Sezin Palmer is an unsuitable candidate to represent District 4 on the Board of Education in Howard County. This is the final post in a multi-part series discussing the reasons why.
In parts 1 and 2 of this series, I presented Sezin’s own words and behaviors as evidence that she is not the benevolent, non-partisan candidate she makes herself out to be. This evidence revealed her to be a right-wing, conservative candidate, fueled by anti-redistricting senti...
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