Harford Schools reject donation of pocket Constitutions because content "has not been approved"
Approve the Constitution?
Last week, Harford County Public Schools rejected a donation of pocket sized Constitutions offered by Suzie Scott, Harford County’s Moms for Liberty chapter Chair.
An email sent to Scott from the Office of Family and Community Partnerships said that the pocket Constitution “has not been approved for distribution to students in Harford County Public Schools”.
Scott hoped her donation of pocket Constitutions would assist local schools in complying with the Federally mandated observance of Constitution Day, a Federal holiday signed into law in 2004 that requires every education institution receiving Federal funds to “hold an educational program about the U.S. Constitution” on or immediately before or after September 17th, per the U.S. Department of Education.
Scott originally called a local high school to inform them of the donation she would make, but was redirected to the HCPS central office where she was asked to complete a form and submit a PDF of the content she wanted to donate. The approval process would take seven to ten days, she was told.
After completing and submitting the form, she requested that the approval process be expedited on grounds that the Constitution is, well, the Constitution…
Then just before dropping the pocket Constitutions off at a local school so they could be distributed once approved, she sent the school office a courtesy email notifying them of the dropoff.
Almost right away she received an email and a call from the Office of Family and Community Partnerships informing her that her donation would not be accepted because the content “has not been approved for distribution to students in Harford County Public Schools”.
On the phone, Scott asked the frontline administrative person who was just delivering the news, who was responsible for making the decision to reject the donation. She was told it was someone in the office of curriculum, probably in the social studies department.
Harford Schools rejecting the Constitution donation from the local Moms for Liberty chapter appears inconsistent with the way other suburban Maryland counties have handled what is clearly a region and even nationwide effort by the conservative activist organization.
Carroll’s Moms for Liberty chair Kit Hart confirmed Carroll County Public Schools accepted the same donation when she made it. And Scott said she believes Kent and Anne Arundel Counties accepted as well.
Moms for Liberty now has a few chapters in the State of Maryland and will hopefully continue to emerge as a formidable force of conservatism and common sense to moderate against the woke Maryland State Department of Education and the local schools systems that operate within it.
Scott has otherwise recently been successful in resisting a new public comment policy proposed by Harford’s Board of Education, that would have limited the number of speakers and required that comments made correspond specifically to a predetermined agenda item.
When Scott spoke out against that policy during a Board of Education meeting last month, the Aegis reported on it saying, “Right-wing action group blasts Harford County school board plans for limiting public comment periods”.
A similar public comment policy was recently introduced in Carroll by new school Superintendent Cynthia McCabe, but a vote on the policy was punted on for at least a month, perhaps an acknowledgement of the bipartisan resistance to the policy.