Jaime Brennan
Running for school board in Frederick County
How old will you be on Election Day (Nov. 5)?
47
Are you currently employed? If so, where, and what is your job title?
Self-employed certified public accountant and management consultant.
What is the highest level of education that you completed, and where did you get that degree?
Bachelor’s degree from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.
Why are you running for the school board?
I am running because I believe our system is at a tipping point. We have strayed too far away from the mission, which is providing a high- quality education to every child, and we have lost focus on producing students who have the tools to go out into the world and be successful. Our test scores are abysmal and falling. Our budget is exploding. Our children have never recovered from COVID lockdowns. We are going in the wrong direction,, and if we do not reset the course, we may not ever be able to recover. Our kids need solid evidence-based proven curriculum; they need options of schools that will meet their needs and support their learning styles; we need to expand and update our Career and Technology Center so we can accommodate all the kids who will want to attend, as well as make sure we can accommodate space in our other programs like the International Baccalaureate program and the Early College Program. We spend far too much money to have such terrible academic results and lack of space in our specialized programs. Additionally, our schools are increasingly unsafe, teachers report students are increasingly unruly, and our teachers are not provided the resources or supports to effectively manage their students, creating learning loss and disruptions as well as significant safety issues. It’s time for a change.
What makes you a good candidate for the board?
I have actually helped run one of the top public charter schools in this state. I have helped make all the decisions as a Board of Trustees member or Frederick Classical Charter School that I will be asked to make as a Board of Education member for Frederick County Public Schools. I know what works and what doesn’t work. I know how to do more with less, since charters receive between 75% and 85% of the funding of their district counterparts. It is possible to provide an education where the vast majority of the students are meeting or exceeding expectations, but it requires solid curriculum, skilled educators and an entire system devoted to academic achievement. I also have extensive business and management experience. And we absolutely need to get this budget under control. Our system asked for almost a billion dollars last year, but they provide very little detailed information on what they spend the money on. We need to attack that budget with a fine-toothed comb. I understand budgeting, business and management in ways no other candidate does, and believe those skills will be useful in the management of the system. I am also a mom and care deeply about the education and what is happening to our children. Our kids are not OK. We have a system that is not meeting their needs, and we need to work to fix that.
What is the most important issue facing your school board and what would you do about it if elected?
There is not just one most important issue. The two most important issues are the poor performance of our students and our budget. This is not just the performance on standardized tests. It is about the disruptions in the classroom, the discipline issues, the fights and the elopements (the early departure of a student during the school day) that occur in some schools more than once every day. Our kids cannot learn in chaos. Our current discipline policy and the lack of proper staffing for our special needs students compounds this issue because teachers and students are not given the support they need. That is in addition to the ineffective curriculum we use.
Additionally, our budget is out of control. I do not believe we have been good stewards of the funds we have been provided, and we need people who will make sure we are using those funds as efficiently as possible. If elected, I will work with administration to implement a more consistent discipline program to make sure that we are using all the tools that we have available to manage our classrooms. I would also make sure that we invest heavily in our special needs students, their teachers and the supports they need to successfully manage their classrooms. Our train-the-trainer approach to special needs educator training has not been effective and created gaps in skills and abilities. We will also need to evaluate and implement new curriculums as well as take a deep dive into the budget.
Please name a public leader you admire and explain why.
Honestly, I am not into the idea of putting other people on pedestals. I think some people show courage and fortitude in some ways and fail dramatically at other times. However, I do very much like the writings of Dr. Thomas Sowell, as I believe he is able to cut through the current politically correct jargon of the day and get right to the heart of the matter, particularly when he is opining on our education system.
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, passed by the General Assembly in 2021, is a 10-year plan that includes increased education funding to support early childhood education, increased teacher starting pay, college/career-readiness standards for high school graduates, and expanded services to multilingual and impoverished families, among other goals. Please tell us your views on the Blueprint and how it will affect your school district.
The only effect the Blueprint will have on our district is a negative impact. While I support increasing teacher salaries in general, that is about the only thing that is remotely workable, achievable or beneficial. There is nothing in the Blueprint that will actually improve student performance, and it is designed to take money from districts and schools that are doing well and transfer it to schools that are not, when the issues at those schools cannot be solved by just spending more money on them. As we are seeing Howard County, this results in things like eliminating gifted-and-talented classes, etc. It also will result in nothing but bloated administration costs as we pad administration positions to provide advancement opportunities. I support paying our seasoned educators well. I support providing them opportunities to mentor and train new staff. But no successful enterprise creates more top-level bureaucracy just to provide promotions. That is a recipe for disaster. We see more and more people and counties backing away from this. Gov. Wes Moore himself is clearly starting to see the writing on the wall and has recently begun to signal that they may need to go back to the drawing board on some aspects of the Blueprint.
Some school districts nationwide are placing new limits on the use of cellphones in middle and high schools. What do you think should be the policy on student use of cellphones in your district, and why do you support that policy?
Cellphones are a huge distraction. We had a policy at our charter school (K-8) of no cellphones during school hours, and that worked well. I think a similar policy should be used systemwide for those grades. Kids could use them before school or after dismissal, but during the day phones were to be off and in bookbags. If a student was caught with the phone out during the day, the phone would be taken, and the parent would have to come and check it out of the office. There were escalating actions based on continued infractions, but they didn’t have to use those too often. For grades 9-12, use of phones at lunch would be acceptable, as many kids have after-school responsibilities that they may need to address. But I think otherwise they should be off and out of sight the rest of the day as well.
Are you satisfied with your school district's efforts to ensure the safety of its students? What, if anything, should be done to improve school safety in your district?
I am satisfied with the safety for the big, catastrophic-type events. But I am not satisfied with the daily acts of violence, fights and elopements that occur. I think that expanding the school resource officer program so that we have a designated SRO in each middle and high school would help. We also need better training on de-escalation and better training on proper restraint procedures. Our district is under a consent decree with the Department of Justice because school officials improperly restrained and excluded special needs students. However, because of that they have gone too far in the other direction. They need to invest in the personnel and the training necessary to do things correctly for the safety of all the students and teachers involved.
Do you think there are circumstances when books should be removed from school libraries? If so, what kind of books should be removed, and who should make those decisions?
Yes, our school libraries should not contain pervasively vulgar or sexually explicit books. Parents have controls on the internet, on Netflix, etc. to protect their kids from that material and they have every reason to assume their students won’t be able to access that stuff at school. My rule of thumb is: If it were a movie, would it be R or worse? If so, then it should not be available to kids under 17, just like they couldn’t go see it at the movies. I don’t see why our school libraries would contain that kind of material in the first place, so I don’t see why these items would have to be “removed”. What kind of adult exposes a minor to R-rated content on purpose? But I certainly also think that parents and concerned community members should be able to challenge items that they find in the school.
Some school districts enact policies allowing transgender and gender nonconforming students to use their preferred pronouns while at the same time not informing those students' parents about that decision. What is your opinion of such policies?
Those policies are absolutely a violation of parental rights, and no school should have them. Social transition is a powerful therapy tool and should not be used outside of the advice or care of a qualified therapist. Our schools should not be practicing psychology without a license on our students. We are seeing districts across the country be sued for policies like this, and I think it is only a matter of time before they are subject to huge judgments, not to mention the defense costs for these bad policies. Our schools are mandatory reporters. If a child reports that they are afraid of a parent for any reason, we are obligated to report that to the appropriate authorities, and then we should let them handle it. It is not the place of our unqualified staff to get into the middle between a parent and their child.
