In 8 Days All Boards of Education will be in Ocean City with Milestone Communications

Prince George's BOE President and Superintendent
at 2013 MABE reception.

On October 1st through 3rd all Maryland Boards of Education will be in Ocean City, MD at the annual Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE) meeting. One of the sponsors of that meeting is Milestone Communications.  Yes, a vendor gets to spend time alone with all of the Board of Education members in the State of Maryland. No bids. No competition. No public.

Below is public comment that details what Prince George's County parents got from the MABE - Milestone partnership.

How many Montgomery County parents want 3 cell towers on every public school playground?  Get ready, our Board of Education could come back from their Ocean City vacation with the very same "deal."

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Prince George's County Public Schools - Board of Education Meeting - Public Comment

September 23, 2014

Good evening. My name is Janis Sartucci and I am a member of the Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland. I am here this evening because over the summer I began researching the deals that Maryland Boards of Education had made with a company called Milestone Communications Management III, Inc. to place cell towers on each and every public school property in the State of Maryland. As part of my research I did a Maryland Public Information Act request for the agreements between the Prince George's County Board of Education and Milestone Communications. Through that research I received and made public documents that were not available on the Board of Education website.

The documents revealed that the Board of Education approved a Master Lease with Milestone on

November 11, 2010, in an agenda item that took up just 40 seconds. While the BOE vote was in November, the actual document was not signed until February 7, 2011, and the signature is not that of the Board President, but of only the superintendent.

On page 11 of the Master Lease at Section 17.1 it calls for Milestone Communications Management III, Inc. to be qualified to do business in the State of Maryland. However, Maryland corporation records seem to show the date of registration for that company in Maryland to be April 5, 2011.

My research also revealed a lease for a cell tower at Flowers High School signed by Superintendent Kevin Maxwell on August 5, 2014. The lease had not been made public. The lease was approved by Monica E. Goldson and James E. Fisher, but the lease was with a different company. It was not with Milestone Communications Management III, Inc.

By making these documents public, parents now know that the Board of Education has approved a deal to built up to 3 cell towers on each of 73 public school sites in the county.

The County process to build a cell tower includes a review by the Tower Commission. The Tower Commission met in July without public notice.

Applications for building permits have now been filed for cell towers on some sites. These applications are not going through the Special Exception process. A building permit can be obtained without a Special Exception if the cell tower will have 4 or fewer site visits per year. However, we know that in Fairfax County, Milestone Communications cell towers on public school sites require one to two site visits per month. With 12 to 24 site visits per year, I believe that the cell tower proposals for Prince George's County Public Schools should be going through the Special Exception process.

I ask, how can parents track construction projects at their schools when companies are switched, documents are signed in secret, and building permits do not go through the Special Exception process?

How is the Board of Education serving school communities by placing these commercial structures on school playgrounds without public notice, without parent input, and without community input.

I know that in 8 days the Board of Education will be in Ocean City for the annual Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE) conference. I know that Milestone Communications will also be there as a sponsor of that conference. Milestone representatives will have more than 3 minutes to talk to each of you in Ocean City. They won't be on the clock.