[personal address redacted]

June 13, 2017

Rushern L. Baker III, County Executive

County Administration Building, Room 5032
14741 Governor Oden Bowie Drive, Upper Marlboro, MD 20772 - 3070
e-mail: countyexecutive@co.pg.md.us

Mr. Baker:

With deep regret I write this Letter of Resignation from the Prince Georges County
School Board, effective June 23, 2017. I accepted with enthusiasm a position on the
Countys School Board in 2013 because I felt I could make a difference by using my
experiences and background as well as exhaustive preparation to inform decisions, but it
has become clear to me that those skills and preparations were not valued by the Chief
Executive Officer, the School Board Chair, and even you. Please know that I had
contemplated leaving the Board for several months, but I stayed because I felt my voice
was needed.

I have communicated my concerns to your office on several occasions about the School
Systems lack of a coherent educational plan replete with performance measures to move
all of our children forward, particularly low performing students; the lack of a thoughtful
budget to support the educational needs of all of our children, particularly low performing
students; the lack of independence of board members to make decisions that are in the
best interest of all of our children, and the inability of our system to see that several of the
deficiencies of immigrant students are also shared by some non-immigrant students who
need and deserve equitable educational support. I did my best in addressing these issues,
but in some cases, my best was not good enough. The barriers were too hard to penetrate.

I have been one of your ardent supporters for nearly twenty years because I believed that
you had the ability and desire to hold our schools largely accountable for the education of
our children. I felt that you could and would inspire the kind of school leadership and
classroom practices needed for the schools to show noticeable improvement. While we
can celebrate some improvements, especially in our specialty schools, we have not taken
the masses as far as we could or should have over the last four years. I am disappointed!

We have a dysfunctional board possibly because too many of the members are
compromised or have conflicts of interest; an angry student body because we have not
figured out how to incorporate some of their good ideas into our practices; unhappy
parents because we do not solve in an efficient manner classroom or administrative
problems impacting their children; and an apathetic teaching force. This scenario must
change!
We sorely need good board members that are independent thinkers, knowledgeable of
educational issues, analytical, and focused on making decisions that are in the best
interest of our children. I sincerely hope you take the aforementioned characteristics into
consideration for my replacement, as board members are entrusted to provide the public
with the kind of governance necessary for a strong public school system in Prince
Georges County. Notwithstanding, the oversight responsibility of the school board must
be revisited, especially as it relates to the academic progress of our children.

Best wishes for a successful public school system.

Sincerely,

Beverly J. Anderson