Capital Article

Pachella, Rachael, Severna Park junior nominated for student member of the Anne Arundel school board, April 19, 2018.  See also: Our say: Anne Arundel school board nominee Josie Urrea makes good points on schools, racism, April 23, 2018.

Snider Comment

It would be interesting to get a story about how CRASC/AACPS went from conducting these student elections in secret to public. Consider the apparently inoccuous Capital photo this year including two unelected students after the election. Last year the Capital included a photo with unelected students in the photo, and I asked Ms. Urrea how that happened. The picture had included some 15+ students in the background. How had the Capital reporter’s student handlers allowed that to happen (all non-officials attending the meeting were required to have student handlers)? Ms. Urrea assured me that the Capital had gotten releases from every student in the photo.  Given the politics of the photo and her position within CRASC, Ms. Urrea had no practical choice but to make such a claim, so I was highly skeptical of it. But I found it too difficult to verify her claim, despite spending at least an hour trying to track down the former reporter who supposedly got all those releases. The reporter did not get back to me.

The larger potential story here is the widespread lack of rule-of-law norms within CRASC/AACPS. Administrators routinely tell the public of rules that the public cannot readily find in document form. And then those rules just as mysteriously change when politically convenient. The resulting feel is of an emerging or authoritarian country where laws are whatever is politically convenient at the moment.

Unfortunately, the Capital lacks both the will and requisite skills to do such a story. That’s sad, given that it’s our county’s newspaper of record.