Montgomery County School’s Superintendent Jerry Weast’s “leadership program” for 15 elite students survived a close call this week, but debate over the program revealed a rift on the school board.
A motion put to the board during Tuesday’s difficult approval of a shrunken $2.1 billion budget would have gotten rid of the superintendent’s program — which includes a bimonthly honors seminar, a yearlong internship and a group service project for select students — and put its coordinator in a full-time position for career and technology education.
The motion failed on a 4-4 tie, but it’s originator, Sharon Cox, blame the board leadership for failing to support a motion that “would adversely affect the superintendent’s interest,” calling the leadership “loathe to cross the superintendent.”
Calls to board President Nancy Navarro and Vice President Shirley Brandman, both of whom voted to maintain Weast’s program, went unreturned.
The decision comes at a time when many parents are calling for more money to be put toward career technology programs, especially as much of the district’s growth comes from students without the immediate means or desire to go to a four-year college.
“It’s not that the program isn’t a benefit to those 15 kids, but in career and tech they lost a position to work on those same kinds of opportunities for the students in regular programs,” Cox said. “I felt this would be equitable.”
Even one of the program’s recent participants agreed that the resources used for the elite group would be better spent helping a broader population.
Nate Kenney, a recent graduate of Rockville High School, worked in an internship at Rockville’s Montgomery Hospice where he worked on computers and provided emotional support for patients. He also joined his 14 peers in a service project tutoring English-language learners at Blair High School.
“It’s a big conflict,” Kenney said of the question to keep his program or create a position for more students in career and technology. “But if it helps the general public, you have to go for that. With that said, the internship was one of the best things throughout my teenage years.”
