Lynne Harris
Running for school board in Montgomery County At Large
How old will you be on Election Day (Nov. 5)?
62
Are you currently employed? If so, where, and what is your job title?
I am currently an at-large member and vice-president of the Montgomery County Board of Education.
What is the highest level of education that you completed, and where did you get that degree?
Bachelor’s of science in nursing, University of Tulsa; law degree, Washington University School of Law in St. Louis; master’s of health science from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
Why are you running for the school board?
I am running for re-election to continue pushing all of the initiatives I have been moving and to provide strong support for our new superintendent.
Some of my areas of work: enhancing community and student engagement informed by the unique communication needs and preferences of each school community, more transparency in all of our work accompanied by true data driven accountability measures, improving our workflow so Montgomery County Public Schools is a better partner, ensuring we have solid math content and English/language arts supports, enhancing support for principals, working to better support newcomers, reforming our human resource work, championing our sustainability policy to become a net zero system, addressing structural issues in our employee benefits trust funds, ensuring expansion of important initiatives like universal pre-K is “right-sized” to actual demand, updating all curriculum to be fully inclusive and 21st century current, and ensuring our operating and capital budget recommendations are data-driven and cognizant of the challenging fiscal climate.
I have an internship group of over 180 students from across the county whom I support in their advocacy work, and to whom I listen to understand the student perspective on Montgomery County Public Schools — student wisdom, the customers of Montgomery County Public Schools, is essential in every priority setting, policy making and problem-solving conversation.
I have had a ringside seat to everything happening in Montgomery County Public Schools for the past three-plus years — the good, the bad, the neutral. That experience empowers me to celebrate what’s working, fix what’s not, and focus intently on financial realities and accountability.
What makes you a good candidate for the board?
I am a good candidate for the Board of Education because I have served in this role for the past three-plus years, some of the most difficult in recent memory, during which the board was able to move Montgomery County Public Schools forward with the leadership changes we needed and the hiring of an excellent new superintendent.
During my service I have chaired the Fiscal Management Committee, using that committee to examine many areas of Montgomery County Public Schools through the lens of operational excellence, which has included providing unprecedented support for the sustainability initiatives our team wanted to enact, enhancing the clarity of Montgomery County Public Schools public-facing contracting documents, and spearheading a workflow analysis to identify bottlenecks in our contracting, procurement, and MOU processes.
My board service has been informed by my 15 years as an education advocate—as a local PTA leader, 10 years as a county-wide parent-teacher association leader (serving as Montgomery County Council of PTAs vice president of educational issues, vice president of advocacy and president among other roles), and my service as an Montgomery County Public Schools teacher. That work gives me a deeply substantive understanding of the breadth and depth of issues confronting a large school system in 2024.
I work extraordinarily hard in this role, and do my homework to prepare for every meeting, work session and public hearing. I believe the quality of my work and preparation is evident at any board or committee meeting, all of which are livestreamed then permanently posted on the Montgomery County Public Schools website for anyone to view.
What is the most important issue facing your school board and what would you do about it if elected?
The most important work of the Montgomery County Board of Education in 2024 is to create a strong relationship with the new superintendent, built on trust, open and continual communication and information-sharing, and a shared vision of high expectations for every area of work. Directly connected to that is to create the conditions and provide the support for him to succeed.
Inherent in creating that relationship and support is standing firm in the belief that the primary job of central office is to support principals and schools, so that they have the resources and supports they need to succeed, and sharing the superintendent's strong belief that education is a people business, and Montgomery County Public Schools must get better at treating people like people – with empathy and respect – even during difficult times. ALL people -- staff, students, families, community.
For me the question isn't what will I do about this issue, but what AM I doing about this issue. During the superintendent search process I was very frank about the need for honesty, trustworthiness, humility and kindness in all aspects of the work of MCPS. Finding candidates that shared that belief was a non-negotiable for me in the selection of the new superintendent.
Since July 1, I have continued to both communicate and model these expectations – for openness, honesty, consistency and humanity.
Please name a public leader you admire and explain why.
Barack Obama. I was one of the inspired in 2008 when I was the parent of a kindergartner and a full-time public health graduate student at Johns Hopkins. That inspiration led me to take a 70-hour/week unpaid job as a field coordinator for the Obama campaign in Fairfax County — for three months I did my parent job, my student work, and slept little as I worked from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. Monday to Friday, and 16 hours a day on weekends.
Why? Because I saw a leader who was whip smart but had no ego. Who was compassionate and pragmatic. A leader who believed in true social justice, that everyone has value and should have the opportunity to share their talent. I saw a leader who shared my view that public service — as a teacher, healthcare professional, government worker and on and on — is the highest calling.
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.
I continue to be a big fan of the work of the Kirwan Commission to perform a holistic and objective analysis of the state of public education in Maryland, and make straightforward recommendations about the steps required to transform our public school system into one that is globally competitive.
The Blueprint that emerged is both practical and aspirational — and as with all such things, merging the aspirations with reality requires focus, commitment and pragmatism.
Montgomery County has already taken actions with significant budgetary implications to accelerate the achievement of Blueprint goals — the two-year salary agreement that significantly enhanced teacher pay is an example. Montgomery County Public Schools has also significantly invested in pre-kindergarten seats, a challenge in this fiscal climate is to right-size that investment — so supply doesn’t exceed demand. Like all other counties, Montgomery is finding the Blueprint vision of a 50/50 mix in public/private pre-kindergarten seats by 2026 likely unachievable — private providers are struggling with Maryland’s onerous bureaucracy around licensing and certifying pre-kindergarten educators and facilities.
Montgomery County Public Schools has also greatly expanded supports for emergent multilingual learners — a growing segment of our enrollment — our challenge is to ensure evidence-based best practices are the foundation of those supports. We are also expanding our industry partnerships to provide truly meaningful internship and apprenticeship opportunities for the increasing number of students participating in career and technical education programs — but we must work to transform Maryland State Department of Education policies which create obstacles for career and technical education participation — certain graduation requirements and the unweighting of many career and technical education courses are two examples.
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?
As a former teacher, I know the ongoing distractions and challenges cellphones place on student engagement in the classroom. As a public health practitioner who focuses on prevention, I know that the predatory nature of social media algorithms truly damages youth mental wellness, and the addictive nature of screens is real.
I support an “away all day” cellphone policy — to improve student engagement, social emotional development and academic outcomes. I closely follow the experience of school systems and states that have already banned phones, and have had conversations about process with Dr. Thomas W. Taylor, who came to Montgomery County Public Schools from a school system that recently banned cellphones.
We must move forward in a thoughtful, thorough way — cognizant of new realities like student medical needs requiring periodic phone access, or learning challenges supported by technology, and cognizant of what we can learn from systems that are ahead of us.
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?
Montgomery County Public Schools aims to be thoughtful and constructive in addressing safety and security concerns, which requires far more than student discipline, policing and infrastructure. One of the most important strategies to create safe schools is ensuring schools are inclusive places where everyone feels welcome and valued. Working closely with the Positive Youth Development teams is also essential – merging their work addressing, defusing and healing community conflict before it can erupt in a school with the work happening inside schools to support students and combat hate in all its forms.
From an infrastructure perspective, Montgomery County Public Schools is installing more security cameras and door alarms, plus technology enhancing emergency communications to overcome “dead zones,” and working to create cohesive culture in schools so that everyone partners to make schools safer. We’re strategically increasing security staffing, and assessing weapons detection technology from an operational standpoint, looking at the experience of systems currently piloting it
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?
I am no fan of banning books. The only instance in which I can envision supporting the removal of a book from a school library is when that book is truly age-inappropriate for the students who patronize that library.
Decisions about age appropriateness should be made by professional librarians using transparent guidelines, not public opinion. Free choice books in a library are just that — open to someone to choose if they wish. If families want to restrict the books their students read, they have many avenues to do that — but imposing those choices and personal judgements on thousands of others is not appropriate.
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?
I wholly support Montgomery County Public Schools policy supporting students in safely expressing their gender identity. Our policy allows students to use facilities aligned with their gender identity, use their preferred pronouns, and we are focused on creating gender-neutral facilities and communications along with fully inclusive and affirming classrooms.
Our policy is governed by student safety — LGBTQ+ youth are the most at-risk. They are the most vulnerable to being unhoused, rejected by family, and most at-risk of bullying, hate, anxiety, depression and suicide. Policy must be situated in reality. Accordingly I am proud that Montgomery County Public Schools policy is to provide a welcoming and supportive space for students, to support them in expressing their gender identity, and to partner with families in supporting LGBTQ+ students EXCEPT when the student tells us they will not be safe if family are informed.
