County Executive candidate Evan Glass recently posted a call for MCPS transparency and a link to his piece in Bethesda Magazine Reforming our school budgets. That piece also focused on a demand for transparency in MCPS. In this series we’ll investigate just how sincere his demands are.
The “Epstein Files” are all the rage, nowadays among President Trump’s own MAGA supporters. Who is named in the files? Who participated in the predatory behavior? Who is covering it all up? That’s at the national level. At the local level, within our public schools, we have our own Epstein files. They pertain to the sexual harassment by disgraced middle school principal Joel Beidleman. Even though several teachers had filed complaints against Beidleman, he was moved from school to school in an apparent effort to cover up the entire scandal for over six years.
- If someone at the union knew about Beidleman and did nothing about the matter, then that union representative must be fired.
- If nobody in the teachers’ union was aware of Beidleman’s predation, then the union cannot protect teachers’ civil rights and must be decertified.
- Similarly, if someone at MCPS knew about Beidleman and did nothing about the matter, then that administrator must be fired.
We do have an indication that former superintendent Monifa McKnight knew about the harassment, because she was forced to resign and subsequently received $1.3 million in severance pay (hush money?). At this point the only person who was punished for Beidleman’s harassment was Beidleman himself.
The only insight we have into the entire scandal is the infamous and heavily redacted Jackson Lewis Independent Investigation Report, which indicates that at least one person at the teachers’ union and another at MCPS did indeed know about the predation and were unable or unwilling to stop it. Who are those people, and are they still employed by the union or MCPS to “protect” teachers?
Transparency goes a long way to building confidence in an institution. Heavily redacted reports by external consultants paid by the institution under investigation is not transparent and does not build confidence in MCPS or the teachers’ union. Mr. Glass can demonstrate great sincerity in his transparency demands by releasing our local Epstein Files.
