Maryland School District Burns $1 Million on Sex-Pest Investigation and Defending Woke Sex-Ed

We reported in January that Maryland’s largest school district spent $487,735 on legal fees in July–August 2023, a 548 percent increase from the same time period the year prior. The increase was due to “substantial litigation on two separate matters pending in Federal Court,” the district said at the time: Mahmoud v. McKnight, a case brought by parents protesting the district’s refusal to allow families to opt out of sexuality and gender curriculum, and an investigation into the district’s mass cover-up of a principal’s sexual abuse record.

Montgomery County Public Schools released its legal fees report through the month of December 2023 this week. The grand total, still “due to substantial litigation on two separate matters pending in Federal Court,” is now $1,101,418 for Fiscal Year 2024 (and still counting! Maryland’s fiscal year ends on June 30).

In the parental opt-out case, the district could’ve saved Maryland constituents hundreds of thousands of dollars by allowing parents to maintain control of their children’s sexual instruction. In fact, the district allowed parents to opt their children out of the lessons — which promote LGBTQ pride books among other gender-focused instruction — for months before abruptly taking that right away. The district so far has no plans to reinstate opt-out. Why? One of the district’s lawyers admitted in oral arguments that the curriculum is “critical for educating children in a diverse society” and “doesn’t work” unless all students participate (those lawyers have cost taxpayers $317,674 this fiscal year).

Then there’s the investigation into former staffer Joel Beidleman’s accused pattern of sexual assault and harassment, which the district knew about yet ignored when it promoted him to be principal of Paint Branch High School. MCPS only acknowledged its wrongdoing after the Washington Post reported that Beidleman’s colleagues had filed at least 18 complaints alleging his misconduct since 2016. MCPS hired Baltimore firm Jackson-Lewis to conduct an “independent” investigation (even though there were questions as to just how independent the investigation was; the firm has represented MCPS in other legal matters), and the firm found:

[That] district officials ignored informal and anonymous complaints against Beidleman, investigating only the misconduct claims that were filed to the central office on a specific form. It also said “Directors of [the Office of School Support and Well-Being] generally have a practice of deferring to [internal investigators’] decision not to investigate anonymous complaints, even when those Directors are aware of specific allegations contained in those anonymous complaints.”

That time, MCPS spent $303,833 investigating its own incompetence. If MCPS were numerate, it would avoid self-destructive legal battles and reappoint those funds to aid the district’s chronically absent and math-deficient students. Unfortunately, the school system is as hard up for sense as it is for cents.