Education

Maryland Schools Leader Leaves District Plagued By Corruption Scandals

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Rob Shimshock Education Reporter
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A Maryland schools deputy superintendent is leaving a district plagued by corruption scandals, including pay hikes and inflated graduation rates.

Prince George’s County Public Schools deputy superintendent Monique Whittington Davis will move to Anne Arundel County Public Schools, where she will resume a role as a regional assistant superintendent, which she vacated in 2013, reported The Washington Post on Monday.

“Obviously [Davis] has some institutional knowledge about our school system and our schools, and that will be an asset to her and to us,” Anne Arundel schools spokesman Bob Mosier told WaPo. The district confirmed Davis’s appointment June 20.

Davis will not be the only school official to leave Prince George’s County. District chief executive officer Kevin Maxwell said May 1 that he would leave after the close of the school year. Maxwell and Davis had previously served as colleagues in Anne Arundel, and Davis was his first pick for leadership after he assumed the chief executive role.

Maxwell has not yet resigned, and members of Prince George’s school board claim the county executive is organizing a “massive severance payment” for the official, an assertion school board chairman Segun Eubanks denies. Maxwell himself was the center of a financial scandal in April when school board members alleged he was out of line for raising an employee’s salary by eight times the normal rate. (RELATED: Public School Official Under Fire For Raising Employee’s Salary By Eight Times Normal Rate)

“This is a reckless disregard for taxpayer dollars in Prince George’s County,” Prince George’s County school board member Raaheela Ahmed and two others wrote at the time, according to a WaPo article from April 26. “It is decimating the morale of hard-working employees in the school district.”

A November 2017 Maryland audit revealed that 5 percent of Prince George’s County Public Schools’ 2016 graduates had not met the standards necessary to graduate. State investigators discovered evidence of abnormalities in grade changes and post-graduation transcript alteration, reported WUSA9.

Davis, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel County Public Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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