Patch: School Board Candidate Questions: Karen Smith District 3 Challenger

Patch reached out to all board of education candidates.

Patch: What are your top two priorities should you win?

Karen Smith: 1) Clarify the budget process by bringing in professional management auditors to help us do a perfomance audit, so that we can increase transparency and identify what we can cut with the least harm to the classroom during the lean times coming.

2) Change the tone of MCPS to be more collaborative, with both parents and staff. We should welcome parental input at every level. We need to listen more and litigate less. Also, MCPS has many intelligent and thoughtful teachers and administrators. Any proposed changes in curriculum and instruction will work better if teachers and administrators are brought in to the process in a school-by-school, genuinely collaborative effort. Recurring mandates from above without consultation are part of what drives good teachers to take jobs in private schools for less money...

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