A group of Montgomery County parents say the county’s Board of Education violated state law by renting public school property to cell phone companies for cell towers. The group, which includes members of the Parents’ Coaltion of Montgomery County, is appealing to the Maryland Board of Education the county school board’s June decision to grant six of the leases. To date, Montgomery County has signed 29 leases with companies such as T-Mobile, Verizon and Cingular on 12 sites across the county, said Lesli Maxwell, spokeswoman for Montgomery County Public Schools.
The county school board lacks the authority to lease public school land to private companies other than childcare centers, said Parents’ Coalition member Janis Sartucci, one of the parents behind the appeal. The majority of the leases were signed by former Superintendent Jerry Weast without the board’s approval, she said, which was also beyond his authority.
When Weast bypassed the school board, he didn’t allow the public an opportunity to voice their opinion, Sartucci said. She cited a laundry list of concerns parents have, from the “stranger danger” presented by people who service the cell towers and the threat of hazardous materials near children to the possibility of the towers falling over in bad weather.
The cell phone towers brought in nearly $700,000 in fiscal 2010, the Washington Examiner reported previously. The money is divided evenly among the school where the tower is located, the school’s cluster and the school system, Maxwell said. She didn’t know how much revenue the towers have raised since then.
But “there is just not enough financial incentive to convince me to take the safety risk where kids are still growing,” said school board Laura Berthiaume, who voted against putting a cell phone tower at Capt. James E. Daly Elementary School. Though she would not comment on the parents’ appeal specifically, she said she has less of a problem with a cell tower at a high school.
School board President Christopher Barclay said he didn’t know about the appeal when asked. Maxwell said the board and new Superintendent Joshua Starr hadn’t had enough time to evaluate the appeal since they received it on Friday.
