Montgomery County Sierra Club is pleased to enthusiastically endorse two stellar candidates for the Board of Education -- Shebra Evans for District 4, and Lynne Harris for At-Large.  Read the full announcement here.

Background 

Sierra Club’s number one priority is to address climate change – quickly and aggressively. Montgomery County Public Schools is the largest school district in Maryland. The Board of Education controls about half the county budget and makes decisions that directly impact climate change – such as energy efficiency (in hundreds of buildings – schools, offices),  transportation (getting more than 150K students to/from school each day), and smart growth (design and location of schools). In addition, the Board of Education makes decisions in several key arenas of great concern to Sierra Club -- such as equity (addressing segregation), curriculum (inclusion of climate change), food (healthy food, composting), water quality, and synthetic turf.

Thus, the MoCo Sierra Club has decided to endorse two BOE candidates in the 2020 general election.  

District 4 

We strongly endorse Shebra Evans.

Shebra Evans was first elected to the BOE in 2016; she is the incumbent, running for re-election.  Her number one priority is equity – moving MCPS to do a better job of serving minority and lower-income students.  She is passionate and persuasive in leading the BOE to more fully and aggressively address the segregation that persists in the school system.

Her demeanor is low key; she is calm, cool, collected.  She is personable.  It is easy to see why her colleagues have elected her to be president of the BOE.

She has pro-actively reached out to County Council members and the Planning Board; this is important for building greater cooperation and collaboration between MCPS and other key County players.

At-Large

We strongly endorse Lynne Harris.

Lynne Harris is a dynamic candidate who, if elected, will immediately step in as a strong thought leader on the BOE.  She is both personable and high energy.  

She has academic credentials in public health, nursing, and law.  More important than her academic background, she has had wide-ranging participation over the past 10 years in MCPS – as a teacher, as a parent, in her local PTA, and in the county-wide PTA.  

She has also used the past several years to get ready to serve on the BOE – she knows many of the key MCPS players.  Importantly, she understands many of the systems and thus many of the challenges she will face on BOE, as well as the opportunities.

Although her number one priority is addressing equity, she is excited and knowledgeable about each of the Sierra Club issues raised in our written questionnaire, and in our interview.

We believe she will accomplish much as a BOE member.  Included will be pushing MCPS to move forward substantially on many of Sierra Club’s priorities.

In conclusion 

Sierra Club looks forward to working with both Shebra Evans and Lynne Harris.  We highly recommend them both.

These endorsements reflect a defined process. The Montgomery County Sierra Club Political Committee sent questionnaires to all candidates who had filed for office, registered for the Public Financing Program, or were listed as a candidate in marylandreporter.com. An Interview Team (mainly Executive Committee members) interviewed all candidates who returned a questionnaire and made recommendations to the full Montgomery County Executive Committee. Only recommendations approved by a 2/3 vote were reviewed by the Chapter (State) Executive Committee. Those candidates who were approved by the Chapter Executive Committee by a 2/3 vote were endorsed.