Maryland Gov. Martin O?Malley and new Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon have wasted little time ending the six-month education and election-year controversy that held up the reappointments of City School Board Chairman Brian Morris and Commissioner Jerrelle Francois and left several other board positions vacant.
Monday, O?Malley and Dixon announced the reappointment of Morris and Francois, as well as selections to fill the three remaining open School Board positions ? unfilled since the race between O?Malley and former Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich overheated last summer.
The new school board commissioners are: Maxine Wood, a former Baltimore elementary school principal, former director of New School Development at Johns Hopkins University, and former assistant superintendent and acting superintendent for the Alexandria, Va., school system; Robert Heck, a parent advocate and children?s educational television host for Maryland Public Television for the past 15 years; and Neil Duke, a former Air Force captain, an attorney with the law firm Ober Kaler P.C. and former first-vice president of the Baltimore Branch of the NAACP.
In accordance with the 1997 city-state school partnership, the school board of commissioners must be jointly appointed by the governor and the mayor.
Ehrlich made the appointments a campaign issue in August after the board moved to lower the passing grade mark in city schools from 70 percent to 60 percent.
That decision sparked debate, but matched the rest of the state.
Ehrlich specifically refused Morris? and Francois? reappointment, along with that of commissioner Diane Bell-McKoy, who resigned after becoming the CEO of Associated Black Charities in November.
