Listen as Larry spoke with Prince George’s County School Board Member Edward Burroughs regarding the spike in misconduct cases within the school district.
During the interview, Burroughs expressed his concern in the competence of Superintendent Dr. Kevin Maxwell:
O’Connor: What’s going to change and who’s going to change it?
Burroughs: So, ideally the Superintendent manages the daily operations of the school system. The board does have policies and we are the oversight panel but it’s kind of the Superintendent’s job to do this. I mean he has over a $450,000 compensation package and what we’re experiencing looks like incompetence to me to be quite honest. And so there are a number of school board members who have started to create plans to deal with this. We’ve met with teachers, assistant principals, bus drivers and we’re hoping that we can formulate a plan on how to address this so that this does not happen in the future. Because if this continues to happen, we’re going to lose our best employees.
O’Connor: This is Dr. Kevin Maxwell you’re referring to?
Burroughs: I am.
O’Connor: So have you lost confidence in his ability to run the system?
Burroughs: At the end of the day, when we lost 6.5 million dollars in federal funds the Superintendent said he didn’t know that there were abuse cases going on or that the federal government was trying to contact him. And so at that point in time, I had leadership concerns then because the federal government tried numerous times to try to contact him to do something about this. And then the response is not working out…so I’m just not sure what we’re getting for over $450,000. You know, I’m not clear … Our students deserve so much better and our teachers deserve to work in an environment that’s better than this. And so, if he’s unable to help us get to where we need to be, then I’m not sure why he’s there.
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