The first time we critiqued the Office of Inspector General (OIG) was in June 2023 over its report about the county’s bag tax. In May 2024 we again critiqued the OIG over what appeared to be a lot of talented people spending a year doing (or forced to do) a mediocre job.
Here we are, 16 months later, and Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi hits pay dirt. She and her team went after the biggest fish of them all: Montgomery County Public Schools.
In her report Review of MCPS Background Screening Office, Limarzi found that “the criminal histories of more than 12,000 MCPS employees are not being monitored and that 4,900 individuals who potentially have access to MCPS students have not received initial CPS queries.” These background checks are not a suggestion or a recommendation that the OIG thinks would be a good idea. These lapses are actual violations of Maryland’s state code and MCPS’s own procedures.
Many news outlets have provided summaries of the OIG’s findings, such as WJLA and NBC. For my contribution, I’d paint a larger picture of how courageous the OIG can be.
OIG stated its objective quite succinctly: “Through this review we sought to determine whether MCPS’ process for conducting background checks for individuals that have access to students complies with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”
Question #1 What prompted this review? Why did the OIG even think about reviewing MCPS’s background checks?
Question #2 Once it decided to do the review, why did it actually execute? I’m sure the OIG has a list of other matters it would like to investigate, why did it act on this one?
Question #3 By December 2, 2024, the OIG issued a memorandum to the MCPS Superintendent Thomas W. Taylor alerting him of the backlog. Surely the OIG became aware of the backlog’s magnitude months before then. Already at that time the OIG could have ceased work on this investigation and bury its initial findings. Why did it pursue the matter to the very end?
Question #4 In the report’s section “OIG Comments to the Superintendent’s Response,” why did the OIG take such pains to paint Taylor and MCPS’s senior leadership as paranoids doing everything to avoid responsibility?
Although the Superintendent asserts that MCPS takes “full responsibility” for the deficiencies identified in the report, we find the response perplexing and are disappointed by the apparent attempts to transfer blame to this office for his administration’s “inability to act more swiftly” to address these serious issues that have been well known at MCPS for years and yet have gone unaddressed.
The last paragraph of that section is the OIG’s unequivocal evaluation of MCPS’s leadership in this matter.
Lastly, in contrast to their statements, the actions by MCPS senior leaders do not demonstrate either accountability or transparency. The fact remains that thousands of individuals with unsupervised access to MCPS schools and students have not had a criminal history check in more than five years and thousands more have not completed a CPS check. In the end, only one entity is tasked with and has accepted the responsibility for obtaining these background checks to safeguard employees and students, and that is MCPS.
Ms. Limarzi, both MCPS and the teachers’ union could now put pressure on the County Council to have you and your staff put into exile. Should that happen, it’s unlikely that any other progressive jurisdiction would hire you. The fact that you pursued this investigation to its conclusion shows courage and a high ethical standard—traits that have been missing from MCPS for quite some time.
