1. How should the county address the unmet needs facing our schools, and how would you prioritize aid for education in budget deliberations?
I am a product of public schools — Montgomery County Public Schools — and I went on to a successful academic career (B.S.F.S from Georgetown; M.A.I.R from Johns Hopkins) and professional career as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. I mention it because it is the reason I approach this as a question of arithmetic and obligation rather than of ideology.
Education is already the largest single line in the Talbot County budget. The FY2026 general fund allocated $65.8 million to education out of $161.1 million total. The FY2027 budget the Council adopted in May came in at $159.1 million, and the school system's unrestricted operating revenue rose to roughly $84.6 million, about $3 million above the prior year.
The Blueprint for Maryland's Future is state law. The county's local share is not discretionary, and it is scheduled to grow, significantly. County staff have projected the required local contribution rising from roughly $55 million in FY2026 to roughly $90 million by FY2034. That is a $35 million increase over eight years, arriving on a schedule that is already known.
Talbot's current practice is to meet that obligation one budget cycle at a time, largely at the minimum, and to argue about the increment every spring. That approach is very expensive. Council Vice President Lesher has made this point directly — deferring an increase does not eliminate it, it makes the following year more difficult and challenging, and steady incremental increases are cheaper and more predictable than a series of deferrals followed by a shock. I agree with that assessment, and it reflects ordinary budget discipline rather than any particular view of the Blueprint.
Specifically, I would: (1) Publish a multi-year education funding forecast, the same way the county produces a Capital Improvement Program, so the path to the FY2034 number is planned rather than litigated every spring. (2) Fund incrementally and predictably, using capacity above the minimum to smooth the curve rather than bank the difference and face a larger step later. (3) Protect the positions that are hardest to rebuild — the FY2026 budget's 1.06-cent education supplement funded teacher pensions and nine positions: two social workers, six instructional assistants, and one special education teacher. Specialists and support staff who leave a small district generally do not come back. (4) Insist on a clear ask, with a joint work session early in the cycle, before positions harden.
I have done a version of this work under considerably worse conditions. As Deputy Chief of Mission in Caracas, I was responsible for the U.S. Embassy's relationship with the international school the Embassy supported, during years when enrollment was falling because the economy and the security situation were collapsing and families were being evacuated frequently. The only thing that worked was continuous, honest dialogue so that decisions were made together, early, and with everyone looking at the same numbers. Budget conflict between a county council and a school board is almost never really about the money. It is about the two institutions arriving at the table in May with different numbers and no shared history of how they got there.
2. How will you address critical concerns with educator recruitment and retention?
The County Council does not set teacher salaries. The Board of Education negotiates them, and the Council's role is the size of the appropriation that makes them possible. I want to be straightforward about that division rather than promise things the office for which I am running does not control.
Within what the Council does control: (1) Housing — the county's most direct lever. Talbot's housing costs have moved well beyond what a starting teacher earns, and the Blueprint's $60,000 salary floor does not close that gap in Talbot. Zoning tools, density where infrastructure supports it, and attainable housing requirements in large residential approvals are all county decisions, and I would pursue them. (2) Child care — the Chapel District Elementary renovation expanded capacity for Critchlow Adkins Children's Center; that is a retention measure as much as an education one. (3) Broadband — all addresses in the county now have access, and Talbot is the first county to achieve that; we need to build upon it. (4) Predictable funding — districts that cannot tell candidates what next year's staffing looks like lose candidates to districts that can. A multi-year funding forecast is a recruitment tool. (5) Working conditions — volunteers can supplement adequate staffing, never substitute for it. A volunteer does not carry a caseload, and no county should pretend otherwise.
3. Do you support Maryland's maintenance of effort law? How do we manage rising costs with limited resources?
Support. Maintenance of effort is a floor, not a ceiling, and it exists because per-pupil funding that ratchets downward is very difficult to recover from.
On managing rising costs with limited resources: Talbot's constraint is structural and worth stating plainly. The county has the second-lowest property tax rate and the second-lowest income tax rate in Maryland, at 2.4 percent, and operates under a revenue cap. It also holds a AAA bond rating from Fitch. That combination means the county is not in fiscal distress — it is in a self-imposed revenue box, and it should say so honestly rather than describing mandates as though they were unforeseen.
Managing this requires three things: a realistic multi-year forecast, an honest public accounting of what the revenue structure can and cannot support, and growth that pays its own way. On the last point, a nexus study and current impact fees would shift some of the cost of new school and infrastructure capacity onto the development that creates the demand, rather than onto existing taxpayers.
4. Do you support allocating public funding to home and privately schooled students?
Oppose. Public dollars should carry public accountability. Maryland does not accredit or license private schools, and they are not required to report teacher qualifications, class sizes, retention, graduation rates, or discipline data. Without those measures there is no way to evaluate whether a public appropriation produced anything. That is a sufficient reason to oppose it on its own terms, before reaching any argument about school choice.
The practical objection is simpler. Talbot is meeting a rising statutory obligation to its public schools inside a revenue cap. There is no surplus here to divert.
5. Do you support public education employees' rights to bargain collectively?
Support. Maryland law provides them, and I would not support efforts to narrow them.
I am a union member myself. Throughout my Foreign Service career I belonged to the American Foreign Service Association, and I turned to AFSA for assistance and support at several points over thirty-two years. I know from my own experience what it means to have representation when you need it, and what the alternative looks like for an employee standing alone against an institution. That is not an abstraction to me.
To be accurate about the office: the County Council is not the bargaining employer for school employees — the Board of Education is. What the Council does is set the appropriation that determines what is available at the table. I would not use the appropriation as an instrument to influence a negotiation the Council is not party to.
6. What would you do to increase parental involvement and public support for our public schools and educators?
Most of the levers here belong to the school system. The county's contribution is largely about removing obstacles, connecting the schools to resources the community already has, and how elected officials talk about the schools.
Removing obstacles. Transportation, child care during evening meetings, and meeting times that work for people on shift schedules. Also language. I am Hispanic and bilingual in Spanish and English, and I live as the only non-Venezuelan in a household of five. A significant number of Talbot families are more comfortable in Spanish, and a school system that communicates with them only in English will report low parental involvement and will have measured the wrong thing. Ditto for other languages that are becoming more common in Talbot, like Haitian Creole. Interpretation at meetings and translated materials are not courtesies; they are the difference between a parent attending and not. I serve on the board of the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center in Easton, and I would work to strengthen the connection between organizations like ChesMRC and the schools.
Using a resource the county is unusually rich in. Talbot has a large population of retired teachers, executives, scientists, tradespeople, military and federal officers — people with real expertise, time, and a stated interest in being useful. Volunteer programs in small districts fail on friction, not on willingness: background checks, scheduling, liability, training, and the absence of anyone whose job it is to match a willing retiree to a specific classroom need. The Talbot County Free Library is a natural host and hub, the Commission on Aging and the senior centers are ready-made recruitment channels, and the county could cover the administrative and clearance costs that otherwise fall on the school system's budget.
I want to be clear about what this is and is not. Volunteers supplement professional educators. They do not replace them, they do not reduce the staffing the district needs, and any program worth building has to be designed with educators rather than imposed on them. Built that way, it adds capacity the budget cannot buy. Built the other way, it is a cost-cutting scheme with a friendly name, and I would oppose it.
Public support. Talbot's public schools graduate 95 percent of their students. That number belongs in the county's own communications, not only the school system's. When claims are made about county schools that turn out not to be supported by evidence, public officials should say so, and should say so at the time. Public confidence in the schools is damaged more by unanswered accusations than by bad news.
7. Do you support local efforts to create and support community schools in areas of concentrated poverty?
Support. The evidence for the community school model is reasonably strong, and the Blueprint funds the core of it — the concentration-of-poverty grants and the full-time coordinator position — through the state, not the county.
The county's role is the wraparound half, and that is where delivery actually succeeds or fails. The coordinator's job is to bring services into the building; if the services do not exist locally, the position becomes a referral desk with nowhere to refer. The county controls or influences much of that inventory: the Health Department, behavioral health partners such as Mid Shore Behavioral Health, food access through the food banks and the Neighborhood Service Center, and the nonprofits the county funds through CDBG and other grant programs.
Delivery, concretely: take what each school's needs assessment turns up, check it against what the county actually funds, and close the gaps deliberately rather than hoping the coordinator finds a partner. That is a coordination problem across agencies with competing mandates and separate budgets, which is the problem I spent a career solving.
8. Are you in favor of contracting out custodial, transportation, and maintenance services?
I have written in "neither" rather than check a box. That is a deliberate answer, not an evasion, and I would rather explain it than leave you to guess at it.
My priority is the classroom and the education of children. A blanket yes or a blanket no would both require me to commit in advance to something I cannot see — the terms of a proposal that does not yet exist, in a budget year whose pressures I do not yet know. I am not willing to do that, and I recognize the cost of saying so.
I would prefer not to contract out these services. The objections are practical rather than ideological: public employees are subject to background checks that contractors do not always match, school systems lose the ability to manage performance directly once a function is outsourced, and first-year bids in this sector have a documented history of coming in low and rising afterward.
But I am not going to tell you I would never do it. If the choice came down to contracting a support service or cutting instructional programs children depend on and need, I would look at the specific proposal on its merits — cost over the full contract term, not year one; safety and background-check standards; service quality data; and the effect on the people currently doing the work. I would want the school system's own analysis, not a vendor's.
I would rather give you an answer I can keep than one that sounds better today. If that costs me your recommendation, I understand. You will still have an accurate record of where I stand, which is worth more to both of us than a checked box I might later have to walk back.
Essay: What are the top three things you would like to accomplish in the next four years?
First, a multi-year education funding plan. The county's local education obligation is projected to rise from roughly $55 million to roughly $90 million between FY2026 and FY2034. Talbot currently handles that in one-year increments and treats each increase as a surprise. I would push the Council to publish a multi-year forecast, the same way it does for capital projects, so the path is planned rather than litigated every spring. This does not require agreeing about the Blueprint. It requires acknowledging that the bill is scheduled.
Second, attainable housing. Teachers, deputies, EMTs, nurses, and tradespeople increasingly cannot afford to live in the county they serve. This is a structural problem with direct consequences for recruitment and retention in every public service Talbot depends on, schools included. The tools are county tools — zoning, density where infrastructure supports it, and workforce housing components in large residential approvals. I would use them.
Third, a council that governs. Talbot County government's jurisdiction is infrastructure, land use, public safety, fiscal management, and economic development. When the Council spends its attention on national political arguments, the local costs are real — the DEI dispute in 2025 put $46.8 million in federal airport funding at risk, over language in an employee handbook. I spent 32 years managing complex organizations under pressure, including as Deputy Chief of Mission in Caracas and as Minister Counselor for Political Affairs in Mexico City and in Ottawa. I intend to bring that focus to the work in front of the Council.
Essay: Cannabis revenue and the local tax structure
On directing cannabis revenue locally: Talbot's cannabis money arrives through the state's Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund, which carries statutory purposes and is awarded through a county commission rather than appropriated freely by the Council. The county recently announced its first $200,000 in awards on August 20 — $50,000 in small grants and $150,000 in community impact grants. From what has been reported, I support those allocations. Several go directly to things that determine whether children arrive at school ready to learn: Talbot County Public Schools' career pathways expansion, Talbot Mentors' youth literacy effort, Building African American Minds' workforce and transition work, Tilghman's after-school program, and early learning support through Mid Shore Early Learning Center and Polaris Village.
That is the right use of this money. I support directing the county's cannabis revenue toward youth programming, early learning, behavioral health, and the wraparound services that community schools depend on. Those are school-adjacent needs the general education appropriation does not cover well, and this fund covers them without displacing anything.
On whether it supplements the Blueprint obligation: No, and I would not represent it as though it did. Two hundred thousand dollars is roughly a quarter of one percent of the county's education appropriation. The local Blueprint obligation is projected to grow by about $35 million over eight years. Cannabis revenue is not a funding strategy for that, and treating it as one would mostly serve to postpone the harder conversation.
I would rather this fund do what it is designed to do — reach the specific needs it reaches — than be absorbed into a general appropriation where it disappears.