Trent Kittleman

Running for school board in Howard County District 5

How old will you be on Election Day (Nov. 5)?

Over 50

Are you currently employed? If so, where, and what is your job title?

None.

What is the highest level of education that you completed, and where did you get that degree?

Law degree from the University of Maryland.

Why are you running for the school board?

Because I am passionate about education. Because eight years in the Legislature brought me face to face with the depth and breadth of problems inherent in the current state of public education. And because I have five grandchildren in Howard County Public Schools. The Board of Education needs a knowledgeable, experienced leader who knows how to read a contract and what questions to ask of staff. Too many avoidable problems are happening. Students should be transported to school on time, in buses, and not have to walk up to two miles; and they should feel safe once in school. Deferring maintenance is unacceptable; our students should never have to endure schools with mold, mildew, bad air quality and too few bathrooms! Housing our students in over 250 “temporary” relocatable classrooms due to a lack of capacity in our school buildings isn’t reasonable, particularly when we could use a public-private-partnership to build six schools in two years — as Prince George’s County did. And the persistent failure to meet the needs of our special education students must come to an end. While Howard County still stands as a premier public school system, our academic scores are falling behind those of other counties. I want to see that this stops, and that our schools — just like our students — are once again the best and the brightest.

What makes you a good candidate for the board?

Experience in education: I’ve volunteered as a judge for our fifth-grade Simulated Congressional Hearing program for 13 years, judging numerous schools each year. I write a monthly newsletter titled A Voice for Parents, and I am a current member of the Howard County Public School System Resource Reevaluation Committee. As a delegate, I participated in designing the Kirwin Blueprint, and every day during session, constituents talked to me about all facets of education. The most compelling conversations were with special education teachers who came down every year begging for relief from the constantly-expanding clerical requirements of their job.

Financial experience: As CEO of the Maryland Transportation Authority, I was responsible for the $3.4 million operating budget and the over $6 billion six-year capital budget, giving me a useful understanding of how to maximize budget dollars.

Leadership: As deputy secretary of transportation, I created and guided a stakeholder committee that raised the paratransit on-time pickup from 75% to over 90%. As CEO of the Maryland Transportation Authority, I was able to get the Bay Bridge’s third lane reopened before summer. In both roles, I was an instrumental part of getting the Intercounty Connecter (Route 200) built.

Consensus-builder: I served for 18 months on the Montgomery County Transportation Task Force II. We were given an almost impossible task of arriving at consensus among 34 members ranging from tree-huggers to AAA members. Getting a decisive majority vote to build the Intercounty Connecter was my greatest achievement! Moreover, as a delegate, I spent eight years successfully working with legislators across the aisle.

What is the most important issue facing your school board and what would you do about it if elected?

It’s hard to choose just one, but despite our considerable efforts, Howard County Public School System is still having difficulty providing an adequate education to many of our special needs students. We need to:

1. Undertake strategic planning. Another crucial step, which Superintendent William J. Barnes has recommended, is to involve all stakeholders in a genuine effort to devise a strategic plan that will examine all facets of our special education efforts including looking for answers that have worked in other counties or states.

2. Share health costs with the county. A significant part of the special education budget goes to employing health care professionals. Health care is the responsibility of the state and county governments. It is time to talk with the County Council about assuming certain of the special education health care expenses that are currently funded in the education budget. It is possible that there may be economies of scale found in combining these services.

3. Shift the “burden of proof.” For several years, our formerly bipartisan Howard County delegation unanimously approved, and the Board of Education has supported, a bill to shift the burden of proof from the parents to the school system in cases where the parents feel they must take Howard County Public School System to court to get satisfaction. These cases are almost always about decisions involving Individual Education Plans. When parents know they can afford to challenge such decisions, Howard County Public School System tends to resolve them without the need to go to court. This saves both Howard County Public School System and parents a good deal of money.

Please name a public leader you admire and explain why.

It's difficult to limit my admiration and respect for Thomas Sowell to 150 words. He is a scholar, an economist, a philosopher and a world-traveler who writes cogent and well-documented books (45 to date) and columns on subjects ranging from "Charter Schools And Their Enemies" to "Black Rednecks & White Liberals," to "Knowledge and Decisions," a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, heralded as a "landmark work." Although he stopped writing his column at age 87, his last four books were written and published since he turned 90.

Born into a poor family in North Carolina, he was raised by a great-aunt in New York City, where, as an African-American, he first experienced racism. Nonetheless, he wound up at Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude. He was offered positions both as federal trade commissioner and U.S. secretary of education by different presidents but declined both offers.

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.

During its passage in the legislature, the fact that the bill imposed a significant unfunded mandate on both state and counties made cost the primary concern. In Howard, the Blueprint has added significantly to our current budget needs at a time when our revenues have fallen

The goals of the plan are laudable. Rewarding teachers who obtain national certification with a bonus for teaching in Title I schools is working. Creating academic standards to ready students for college and/or career is laudable. Howard has seen some success in expanding childhood education to full-day but does not have the physical space to meet the Blueprint goals.

One issue raising costs is that local systems must implement Blueprint programs exactly as set forth, when counties may already have similar, successful programs. An alternative is for the state to “certify” a county program as adequate to meet Blueprint standards.

One specific concern for Howard County is that the Blueprint requires 75% of the state funds to “follow the student.” This means that schools with high concentrations of low-income, high-needs students will see increases in overall funding while schools such as those in the western part of Howard County will see a decrease. It is estimated that high-needs students could provide their schools as much as $26,000 per such student, whereas non-high-needs students might provide as little as $6,500. While most of us strongly agree that students with special needs should get more funding, the anticipated gap seen here may be too large.

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?

According to Howard County Public School System Superintendent Bill Barnes, students’ cellphone use is the top concern of teachers in Howard County. Although parents worry that cellphones provide a necessary means of contacting their students during the school day, there are practical solutions that take both parent and teacher concerns into consideration. I would support the solution used by an East Baltimore school that had success, as well as buy-in from their students, using a pouch specifically made for this purpose. At the beginning of the day, student cellphones are locked into a pouch that stays with the student during the day. An administrator controls unlocking the pouches as students leave the school. The process of getting her phone unlocked was a bit cumbersome initially, but it only took a couple seconds and soon became routine according to students.

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?

The board’s decision to double the walking distance and increase the number of students walking last year created serious safety issues. Numerous incidents occurred last year, and we are fortunate that nothing truly harmful has happened. Despite the board approving a decrease in the walking distances, the new plan won’t go into effect until the 2025-26 school year, leaving our pre-kindergartners still obliged to walk up to one mile this year. That needs to be changed, now.

Another major effort at keeping our students safe is to put school resource officers in every school — not just high schools. These officers are specially trained to perform their unique service function, and they are much appreciated by a large majority of parents.

Finally, student-on-student violence has escalated; without adequate consequences that actually deter such behavior, no student is safe.

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?

The misnomer “book banning” being criticized these days is an effort by many parents to have certain books removed from school libraries due to what they consider explicitly sexual content. It is not unreasonable to have explicitly sexual content “that serves no redeeming social purpose” removed from the schools.

I would have more respect for those who are so incensed by the effort to “ban books” if they (the liberal left) had not so very recently gotten a number of different books actually banned on a national level. These six books were all by Dr. Seuss! In 2021, a group of liberal educators, experts, academics, and specialists in the field, convinced Dr. Seuss Enterprises to cease sales and publication of several children’s titles including "The Cat’s Quizzer, “McElligot’s Pool," “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, and “Scrambled Eggs Super.” Don’t want those people making these decisions.

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?

Regardless of the subject matter, I oppose any initiative that seeks to withhold information from parents. It is imperative to recognize that parents hold the ultimate responsibility for raising their children; attempts to undermine this fundamental role are both misguided and potentially harmful.

Educators, particularly teachers, play an essential role in educating our children, imparting knowledge and skills that are critical for their development. However, there is a concerning trend within the education establishment, which appears to be gradually absorbing responsibilities that have traditionally belonged to parents. While it is acknowledged that not every family has the financial means to provide even basic necessities, such as adequate meals, and that the school system has appropriately stepped in to assist in these areas, we must draw a clear line when it comes to matters of cultural, moral and philosophical upbringing. The responsibility for guiding children in these areas should remain with parents.

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