RADICAL AGENDA

WASTING TAXPAYER

FUNDS FOR MONTGOMERY

COUNTY SCHOOLS

Litigious Superintendent's Judicial

Adventures Threaten to Overshadow

Weast's Record of Academic Success

During my 2006 campaign, I did a partial audit of spending by the Montgomery County Public School system. In one case, the renovation of Bells Mill Elementary in Potomac, I found a waste of $500,000 in taxpayer funds. This surplus amount should have been returned to the taxpayers of Montgomery County. Instead, it was used for non-intended purposes.

The other shocking discovery was how much of your tax money was being wasted on fighting predictable lawsuits which resulted from Superintendent Jerry Weast - and the School Board's - radical agenda. Weast was spending about $82,000 a month in court to keep flyers for after-school Bible study out of kids' backpacks. When you consider what else is going into kids' backpacks - drugs, weapons, etc. - in many county schools, you have to be on an anti-Christian crusade to spend even a second worrying about Bible study flyers.

But Weast spent more than a second; he spent over $82,000 a month fighting that lawsuit. We don't have the total number, nor was any verdict ever announced in the case. What we do know is that the school system did not have a lawsuit-proof flyer policy.

Now, why would they not write a lawsuit-proof policy? Well, it could be that they were legally and organizationally incompetent. In that case, the officials responsible should be held accountable. Why should money be taken instead from low-income students around the county?

Of course, the other possibility is that Weast has a radical social agenda, and a "bring 'em on" attitude towards any citizen or group who would dare step up and oppose him.

Witness Weast's latest display of legal jujitsu in the lawsuit against the county's new health curriculum. Schools funded by taxpayer money should not be presenting any one side of a particular argument in these classes. To say that a negative opinion is a "religious" opinion is absurd when the school system is presenting an equally "religious" favorable opinion on the same issue. Because some religions are more liberal and take that favorable position. The only "non-religious" opinion, then, is to stick to the scientific facts.

Why would they go beyond the scientific facts? Because they want to push the envelope through activist judges who will legislate from the bench. In other words, they intentionally put a controversial policy in place in hopes that it will attract a lawsuit. The goal is to get a court decision that will solidify that policy not only in the county, but statewide through the judicial precendent.

What does such a personal and political crusade have to do with Mr. Weast's mandated responsibility to educate the children who attend public school?

Absolutely nothing.

Mr. Weast should stick to improving academics in school, which he has proven to be quite successful at, and should be commended for. And our legislators in Rockville and Annapolis must put aside their own far-left agendas, and begin to require Montgomery County to spend its taxpayer funds on exactly what the citizens expected it to be spent on.