District 2 families, including Greenbelt, began and continue this school year without representation on the Board of Education despite an application period that was concluded even before the vacancy was announced. Board Chair Branndon Jackson requested that County Executive Aisha Braveboy initiate the process to appoint a replacement in a letter dated June 27. The county executive opened a one-week application period three days later, but no appointment has been made. The county executive and her office have refused to answer any questions from the News Review about the vacancy for months.
Since June, we have addressed questions to the county executive and her office about where the application period was advertised, why it was so briefly advertised and why it closed before Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) announced the vacancy, but have received no response. (For our reporting of the stonewalling see the September 3 issue.)
On September 24, following intervention by the state ombuds office, the county executive’s office responded to the Greenbelt News Review’s July 24 Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) request for information relating to the vacancy and application process.
Application Process
Though Braveboy is responsible for making an appointment to the seat, residents must apply for consideration. When District 2 Board of Education Member Jonathan Briggs resigned in June, the county executive’s office opened an application period for seven days, from June 30 to July 7 at 5 p.m. It was posted on the county executive’s website but was not advertised anywhere else. In fact, members of the District 2 community were unaware their representative had resigned until PGCPS made an announcement on July 20, following inquiries from the Greenbelt News Review that day (see the July 23 issue). The only other announcement came during the chair’s report by Jackson during a July 9 Board of Education meeting, which itself was also after the application period for Briggs’ replacement had closed.
Not Advertised
An MPIA request for any and all ways in which the resignation and application window were publicized by the county, including dates of announcements and ways in which they were shared, produced only the singular posting on the county executive’s website. This suggests a break with the way in which other application periods were advertised and shared. For example, in January 2025, a vacancy for the District 4 seat had an application window twice as long and was advertised multiple times by the county on social media alone.
Two Applicants
The News Review’s request for correspondence with candidates and any applications for the seat was denied. “Your request is denied for any applications, communications, or records related to candidates seeking appointment to fill the remainder of the District 2 term, including the total number of applications received are considered personnel files,” said the county executive’s response to that part of our MPIA request. However, further in the email response, the Office of Law shared that during the application period they “only received two submissions.” One of those was from Terence Clegg, candidate for election to the District 2 seat in November, as he confirmed when the News Review asked candidates if they had applied.
No Correspondence
The News Review requested correspondence relating to the vacancy and application, including between the Office of the County Executive and PGCPS and its Board of Education. The office responded that they were “unable to retrieve any records related to the subject of your request.” However, a separate MPIA to PGCPS produced correspondence on official letterhead from Board Chair Jackson to Braveboy on June 27 “formally” notifying her of Briggs’ resignation and requesting she initiate the process to fill the vacancy for the rest of the term, which ends in December.
The News Review reached out to the County Executive’s Office about the existence of documents pursuant to our request that they did not return and received no response. The ombudsman’s office informed us that we must create a new complaint if we wish for mediation in the matter.
Impact
Questions remain as to why the application period was so brief and why it wasn’t advertised, why it wasn’t reopened as some community members called for after only discovering the resignation through the July 20 announcements, and why, following the haste, no appointment has been made.
In his June 27 letter, Jackson wrote, “We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition and maintaining effective representation for the residents of District 2.” He, too, has not responded to multiple inquiries from the News Review about the continuing vacancy.
For families navigating a difficult start to the school year, including some who have attended Board of Education meetings to speak about their challenges, not having a representative has made a tough period more frustrating.
Greenbelt parent Alex Barnes told the News Review, “There have been issues that I wanted to bring to the Board of Education’s attention by way of my representative, starting with ESY (summer school); so I have felt the lack of representation.” District 2 parent Jessica Carroll, who lives in North College Park, says “the start of this school year has highlighted just how deeply a vacant district seat hurts families.” Carroll, whose child attends Dora Kennedy French Immersion (DKFI), noted a lack of advocacy for that community as it dealt with a change in location to the Robert Goddard Montessori School (RGMS) campus and widely predicted transportation problems.
Carroll told the News Review that “North College Park and Greenbelt have traditionally had a large concentration of DKFI families who could previously walk or easily drive to the old location. Shifting the campus to the RGMS site meant an influx of families who now desperately needed reliable bus transportation — yet that operational reality was never properly anticipated or advocated for during the transition and there was no one available once routes were being determined or released over the summer. Because of this representation vacuum, minor-seeming routing decisions became immediate safety crises.”
Carroll has had to raise safety concerns about children forced to cross busy Rhode Island Avenue to and from school buses, she told the News Review. “Without a local board member, there was simply no one at the county level who understood the geography, knew the intersection or grasped what those routing decisions actually meant on the ground,” Carroll said. She pleaded for help from “anyone who might listen,” including College Park City Council members and mayor, county councilmembers, media, Board of Education candidates and neighboring District 4 Board Member Aimee Olivo. “While Ms. Olivo has been a tremendous champion for our campus during this crisis, she naturally has a primary obligation to her own district,” Carroll told the News Review.
When they had representation, District 2 families had someone to write to or call and who could elevate their concerns at the Board of Education. They also received newsletters from their representative and could attend the telephone townhalls he held.
“This administrative chaos and the resulting safety risks could have been avoided or mitigated through a proactive town hall,” says Carroll of the start of this school year. “Instead, families were left scrambling with no accountable representative to turn to.”
“When a whole district goes unrepresented, it is everyday parents and students who pay the price in lost time, stress and compromised safety,” she said.
Braveboy and her office did not respond to numerous calls and emails from the News Review. Jackson has also not responded to multiple requests for information and comment. Tiffani Andorful, board member for District 1, which includes DKFI and RGMS, stated at a recent transportation meeting for those schools that she and board member Pamela Boozer-Strother, District 3, had been working to assist impacted District 2 families who are without a representative right now. The News Review asked Andorful and Boozer-Strother for their perspective on the impact of the ongoing vacancy, whether board members had raised the issue with the chair or county executive and whether they had any information about a timeline for the appointment; neither responded. Candidate Clegg told the News Review he had not heard anything further and remains focused on advocating for District 2 residents and the November election.
