MPS School Board Candidates Respond to Attack Ads

The race for Montgomery County school board is getting dirty according to two candidates who feel like they are being attacked.

Monday morning, District 5 incumbent Melissa Snowden and District 2 candidate Larry Lee held a joint press conference to talk about the matter.
Last week, flyers were mailed out from the MGM NXT PAC, which is a grassroots organization raising money to boot the board with a campaign called “Expect More From Our Schools.”
Both Snowden and Lee were portrayed in a negative light.

“Blame assessment and negative accusations are so toxic and, unfortunately, there seems to be an epidemic of it in Montgomery. The complaints and blame have so overwhelmed people that they forgot about solutions,” said Snowden.

“How in the world do you help something by tearing it down? And when I look at the contributors to this PAC, I do not see the face of Montgomery where almost 79 percent of our students are African-American,” said Lee.

Melissa Snowden has served on the Montgomery County school board for the past 11 years.
She says there are several factors that have contributed to the state of Montgomery Public Schools.

“We’ve got to have more stable funding so we can address the academics needs. We’ve got to improve our curriculum and instruction. I just found out about a week ago that we finally have another reading program. A reading curriculum. That has been horrible for the last several years. We haven’t even had a reading program,” said Snowden.

She also says since the state intervention, there was little the Montgomery County school board could do.
And both candidates agree it takes a community to help the school system thrive and give students the best education.

“This group, here, their hands have been tied. But they are being blamed for all the ills that is going on in this school system. We’ve got to step back and until this community decides it’s our schools and not their schools, then things are going to continue,” said Lee.

The “Expect More From Our Schools” campaign chairman released this statement in response:

“It is disappointing that current MPS school board members and their chosen successor chose to point fingers and pass blame on to others when presented with their dismal record. If they are upset about their record of failed leadership being presented to the public, imagine how the thousands of MPS students, teachers, administrators and parents must feel when they see the complete disregard that the current MPS board has shown toward them,” said chairman Brandon Taylor.