Alexandra Robbins substitute-teaches in Montgomery County Public Schools, in a cluster separate from the ones described in this article.
Correction: This article, originally published at 5:46 p.m. Jan. 22, 2024, was updated at 7:13 p.m. Jan. 22, 2024, to remove an outdated reference to school system communications about Joel Beidleman’s status with the district.
Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Monifa McKnight decried former Farquhar Middle School principal Joel Beidleman’s “years of disturbing and egregious behavior” in a Dec. 1 statement to MCPS employees about the county inspector general’s report on the principal’s misconduct. The superintendent wrote, “As I’ve said since this issue came to our attention this summer, I will take swift, decisive action based on investigative findings.”
However, a MoCo360 investigation found that “this issue” came to the district’s attention before the summer of 2023—and once McKnight was officially informed of it, she did not take timely action, according to a report by Baltimore-based law firm Jackson Lewis and current and former high-ranking district officials’ understanding of redacted portions of that report.
McKnight did not respond to MoCo360’s requests for comment. “All questions related to Dr. Joel Beidleman and any allegations made by him are personnel matters in active investigation and/or litigation,” MCPS spokesman Chris Cram said. “As such the district or any of its employees cannot comment for legal reasons governed by law.”
On Monday, McKnight emailed MCPS employees “an update on the comprehensive corrective action plan we have been developing in response to the allegations of abuse and sexual harassment from last year.” The “Snapshot of Progress” included a few updates to the action plan that McKnight emailed staff October 13 and the list of “corrective measures” McKnight sent to staff in a January 5 email obtained by MoCo360.
The embattled superintendent on Monday also issued a statement saying she was going to fight efforts by the Board of Education to oust her.
Between 2016 and March 2023, educators and parents submitted to the school system at least 18 complaints of Beidleman’s sexual harassment and workplace bullying, according to interviews and documents shared with this reporter for an Aug. 11 Washington Post article; Jackson Lewis uncovered several more complaints. Two former MCPS leaders told MoCo360 that in 2022 they were informed of sexual harassment and workplace bullying allegations against Beidleman. On multiple occasions, according to policy and protocol, central office leaders should have been tasked with briefing McKnight on the allegations against Beidleman, district officials said. McKnight has not publicly shared the dates that she learned about the investigation or the complaints.
One of the complaints was a Feb. 3, 2023 filing of sexual harassment and workplace bullying allegations by a Farquhar social studies teacher who listed 20 instances of misconduct by Beidleman, including telling her in front of coworkers, “You should just f— me” and suggesting she “shave your p—— and sell the hair.”
MCPS Department of Compliance and Investigations coordinator Khalid Walker told MoCo360 that his investigation of the social studies teacher’s claims, which he completed June 12, found that Beidleman violated district sexual harassment policy. The school system has not shared publicly which MCPS officials saw Walker’s draft or were informed of the finding.
On McKnight’s recommendation, the school board promoted Beidleman on June 27 to be the principal of Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville. On July 11, Walker said, then-DCI director Michaele Simmons instructed him to revise his draft to state that Beidleman did not violate district policy, as MoCo360 reported earlier this month. The Jackson Lewis report, which confirmed that the June 12 draft was changed, suggested that the change was due to two concerns regarding the evidence for Walker’s initial findings.
The board released a heavily redacted version of the Jackson Lewis report on Oct. 12. Based on their knowledge of the events and district procedures, nine current and former top-level district officials told MoCo360 that McKnight’s name appeared in some of the redacted blanks. The officials shared this information on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the school system.
By July 19, 2023, “[Dr. McKnight] was fully aware of the investigation, [redacted] and initial inquiries by the Washington Post soliciting information from witnesses about [Dr. Beidleman’s] misconduct,” according to the report and the officials’ bracketed insertions. But, according to a subheading later in the report, “[Dr. McKnight] Did Not Place [Dr. Beidleman] On Administrative Leave And Did Not Notify The Board About Any Concerns About [Dr. Beidleman] Until At Least Sixteen Days After Learning About The Investigation, [redacted] And Washington Post Inquiries.”
The officials also told MoCo360 that McKnight is the employee referenced in the report who “attended the July 20, 2023 Board meeting… [but] did not inform the Board of [her] knowledge about the [Beidleman] Investigation, [redacted], or the initial Washington Post inquiries. The Board was not made aware of any issues with [Dr. Beidleman’s] promotion until on or about August 4, 2023, which was the same day that [Dr. Beidleman] was placed on administrative leave.” Further, the decision to put Beidleman on leave “was due to the imminent media coverage and detailed inquiries by the Washington Post in early August 2023 about [Dr. Beidleman’s] alleged misconduct and not due to the investigation or [redacted].”
McKnight’s employment contract with the board of education specifies that “The Superintendent shall refrain from acts, conduct, or omissions” that could bring “discredit to MCPS, or may be damaging or injurious to the people or reputation of MCPS.” A local employment lawyer said the board could choose to address those omissions but likely would not be bound to do so.
“If the Jackson Lewis report made those findings, the board could take the position that her omission discredited or injured the reputation of MCPS,” said Merry Campbell, chair of the employment and labor practice group at Potomac-based law firm Shulman Rogers. Campbell is not involved in the investigation and has no non-public information about the superintendent’s contract or actions. “If the board wanted to take disciplinary action against the superintendent based on the Jackson Lewis report, it seems like they have information to support an action,” she said. “But that action does not necessarily have to result in a termination and might not involve a public accounting.”
McKnight’s second statement Monday said that the school board “indicated last week their desire for me to step away from my role as superintendent, providing me with no justification for their request. The Board has never written, documented, or communicated any concern about my performance.”
The Board of Education held a closed session Monday “to receive legal advice regarding a personnel matter regarding the status of employment for an employee,” according to a Jan. 22 board memorandum. Board of Education President Karla Silvestre and Chief of Staff Lori-Christina Webb did not respond to requests for comment.
“The first rule of the superintendent’s relationship with the board of education is ‘No surprises.’ Superintendents are trained on that. It is certainly an explicit and understood role of the superintendent in agreement with the board,” said a former MCPS high-ranking district official who is familiar with superintendent protocol. “So if the superintendent were to not share information about a compromised individual, that’s not only problematic that they chose that person in the first place, but also puts board members in a very difficult position. You can’t hide things. It invariably comes back to bite you. That’s why you have to always be completely transparent and share what you know.”
At a Sept. 28 Montgomery County Council hearing about the Beidleman investigation, McKnight said she “was not aware that there was an internal investigation against Dr. Joel Beidleman at the time of his promotion.”
A longtime friendship
On Jan. 10, the district released an inspector general’s Memorandum of Investigation of alleged “misconduct by senior MCPS officials” based on a letter received by the school system. The IG report did not name the letter writer or the officials. But a current and a former district employee familiar with the contents of the letter both said that Beidleman authored it.
According to the IG report, the complaint alleged that, among other items, “two MCPS administrators made inappropriate jokes and statements of a sexual nature directed toward a subordinate,” and “a senior MCPS official was present at a social gathering during which an MCPS employee was intoxicated and attempted to remove their clothing in front of MCPS colleagues.”
Among the officials named in the complaint, according to the two individuals familiar with it, are McKnight and two of her chiefs.
The complaint did not specify which officials allegedly were involved with which acts.
McKnight and the chiefs did not respond to MoCo360’s requests for comment.
Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi reported that her investigation did not substantiate MCPS policy violations by those officials. The complaint “lacked important details such as dates, locations, and other potentially corroborating information, and the complainant ignored our multiple requests for an interview and additional information,” she wrote. “Our attempts to corroborate the allegations were further hindered by an MCPS administrator who provided evasive answers to direct questions and made the unlikely claim that they did not recall memorable events noted in the complaint.”
The current district employee paraphrased from her recollection of the complaint that Beidleman believed those officials “should be held to the same standards he was being held to—and he was being reprimanded,” she said. “What Joel did sucks, but that’s not really the story. It’s so much bigger than Joel Beidleman.”
“They all participated in that culture,” said a former MCPS administrator who claimed to have attended happy hours on several occasions with McKnight, Beidleman and the two chiefs when they were middle school administrators during the 2012-2013 academic year. “I often felt uncomfortable by the excessive drinking, inappropriate sexual jokes and other innuendos of the other administrators in my cluster, including Dr. McKnight. While Dr. Beidleman clearly did some inappropriate things, there’s a bigger issue with the culture of MCPS leadership, and Dr. Beidleman is a product of the environment that groomed him. It was an unprofessional culture, one of hazing, bullying and other inappropriate actions. This is how we were trained.”
Beidleman and his attorney, Jay Crump, did not respond to requests for comment. Cram said that Beidleman “remains an employee on administrative leave” and stopped receiving a salary on Dec. 18.
McKnight remained friends with Beidleman even well into her superintendency, according to six current and former district officials and administrators. “Joel and Monifa [were] good friends. That goes back over a decade,” said the former administrator, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the school system.
High-level awareness of allegations
Despite McKnight’s assertion that Beidleman’s misconduct “came to our attention this summer,” high-level leaders in McKnight’s administration were aware of allegations of Beidleman’s sexual harassment and workplace bullying in 2022, according to central office officials at the time and emails obtained by MoCo360.
In the fall of 2022, MCPS leaders held a meeting about two teachers’ separate anonymous complaints to the state-run reporting service Safe Schools Maryland about Beidleman’s sexual harassment and workplace bullying, according to an attendee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by McKnight.
The social studies teacher—whose named 2023 complaint was later the subject of the internal investigation—was one of those two anonymous teachers, the social studies teacher told MoCo360. The other teacher was a Farquhar colleague who told MoCo360 that a section of his complaint corroborated the social studies teacher’s claims.
During that meeting, which was conducted over the phone, Simmons informed approximately nine other central office executive leaders that the district’s policy was not to investigate anonymous allegations, according to the attendee. (The Jackson Lewis report confirmed that the district followed this policy.) When an official on the call expressed concerns, Simmons said she would “take this back” to the decisionmakers.
Walker, who said he was not at or aware of the meeting, and three current and former central office officials who worked for MCPS at the time said that by “take this back,” Simmons likely would have been referring to regular cabinet meetings at which she presented DCI business to McKnight, then-Deputy Superintendent Patrick Murphy, Chief Operating Officer Brian Hull, then-Chief of Staff Brian Stockton, General Counsel Stephanie Williams, and, usually, the head of HR at the time, Susan Marks. “That was always a standing item on cabinet to hear about the cases at DCI and the investigative world. Cabinet always goes through the complaints,” said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by McKnight.
Simmons and the cabinet officials did not reply to a request for comment. Stockton and Marks no longer work for the district, according to the school system.
The group convened again a week or two later, the attendee recalled, at which time Simmons informed them that the district decided not to place Beidleman on administrative leave. As a result of that meeting, two central office leaders increased the frequency of their visits to Farquhar so that central office would “have a larger presence there,” said the attendee.
Simmons, who is no longer employed by the district, according to MCPS spokesperson Chris Cram, did not respond to requests for comment.
Also, on May 9, 2022, in an email obtained by MoCo360, the teachers union MCEA notified then-MCPS Director of Labor Relations Steve Blivess and then-Labor Relations Coordinator Carrie Booth about “egregious reports” of Beidleman’s alleged sexual harassment at Farquhar. The letter quoted statements from teachers that Beidleman “engaged in sexual activity with staff,” “made comments about women’s chest sizes,” “frequently looks women up and down,” and related a teacher’s flexibility to his speculation of her bedroom activities.
MCEA attached to the email an anonymous Farquhar teacher’s letter that alleged Beidleman’s sexual harassment and referenced text message evidence, obtained by MoCo360, that supported the social studies teacher’s allegations.
Booth replied to MCEA, in an email obtained by MoCo360, that “it is against policy for MCPS employees to commit acts of sexual harassment” and that she would forward the email to the Department of Compliance and Investigations (DCI).
Office of School Support and Well-Being employees also saw and discussed the Farquhar teacher’s email, according to a former OSSWB employee. “We did our due diligence looking into the matter, did not find anything concrete we could address, and it was then referred over to DCI,” he said.
‘That would not have been kept from her’
Fourteen current and former central office employees said that because the subject of the district’s internal investigation was a principal, even before he was a candidate for promotion, Hull and Chief of Human Resources and Development April Key—or her predecessor, Marks—would have been expected to inform the superintendent of the complaints.
Hull and Key did not respond to a request for comment.
Indeed, Simmons told MCPS administrators at an Aug. 16 Administrator Summer Learning Session on “Well Being, Safety and Security” that the DCI director does not make the ultimate decisions on investigations, said three session attendees who requested anonymity for fear of retribution by the school system. A slide from that meeting, obtained by MoCo360, stated that in the district’s investigative process, a disciplinary decision is determined “by Chief, OHRD or Superintendent.” Hull is the chief who oversees Key in OHRD, according to an FY 2024 MCPS organizational chart.
In addition, on June 28 and June 30, Office of the Inspector General of Education Supervisory Inspector Sean Chaney emailed MCPS about a complaint the OIGE had received about Beidleman, according to the Jackson Lewis report and the complainant. “That is very unusual” for the OIGE to contact MCPS about a staff complaint, “so Monifa absolutely would have been notified,” said a former high-ranking central office leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by McKnight. Another former central office official who also requested anonymity for fear of retribution by McKnight confirmed, “I can say with complete certainty I had never heard of OIGE reaching out when I was involved in senior leadership” at MCPS and another Maryland district. “That would not have been kept from her. That’s a big deal.”
The OIGE’s office responded to MoCo360’s inquiry about whom Chaney contacted by emailing that the upcoming county inspector general’s report on the school system’s investigative process “should address your questions.”
The complaint to OIGE—a Farquhar teacher’s June 27 email obtained by MoCo360—alleged that MCPS “covered up a Title IX investigation” involving “prolonged sexual harassment” and “a culture of fear and bullying within the walls of Farquhar Middle School.” The email concluded, “There have been CLEAR TITLE IX violations and MCPS has allowed it to occur, continue, and just promoted this man with a raise to a new principalship. It is criminal what MCPS has done.”
Rather than halt the promotion process—Beidleman did not officially start at Paint Branch until July 1, 2023, according to a June 27 MCPS Board Report—district leaders changed Walker’s finding of sexual harassment and later backdated that change to two days prior to the OIGE’s inquiry, according to Walker and the Jackson Lewis report.
Although McKnight said in her Dec. 1 statement, “I will take swift, decisive action based on investigative findings,” Jackson Lewis reported on Sept. 8 that MCPS’s own internal investigative findings sustained the social studies teacher’s sexual harassment allegations against Beidleman. Yet for at least four months after Jackson Lewis released its report, Beidleman has remained an employee on leave, according to the school system.
Beidleman has previously denied many of the allegations of misconduct. He told the Post in August, “I have always been rated as meeting standard or a highly effective principal.”
The “Action Plan Update” that McKnight released Monday claimed that “Over the past four months, dozens of immediate actions have been implemented to address critical needs of the system.” The listed actions include re-staffing DCI, onboarding new compliance software, streamlining the complaint process, mandating in-person training on sexual harassment, misconduct and workplace bullying for all MCPS supervisory staff, extending email retention to three years beginning Feb. 12, 2024 and stipulating that employees under active investigation cannot be eligible for promotion.
But current and former Farquhar staff members who submitted named complaints to MCPS about Beidleman’s conduct said the “comprehensive corrective action plan” rings hollow because, they said, the district has not contacted them to attempt to correct the alleged abuse they endured. “Many of us had to uproot our careers and change our lives because of that man and MCPS hasn’t even checked in on us. They haven’t acknowledged that they did nothing to support us during years of complaints. They haven’t updated us about Beidleman’s employment status,” said one of the teachers who reported Beidleman to the district. “The Action Update’s ‘immediate actions’ have absolutely no impact on his victims. All these actions do is try to cover their [reputations].”
On Oct. 25, the social studies teacher filed suit against MCPS and Beidleman for discrimination and a hostile work environment. “MCPS, the Board and its agents were aware of Dr. Beidleman’s conduct and failed to exercise reasonable care to prevent or correct the misconduct. Indeed, MCPS ignored multiple complaints of misconduct by Dr. Beidleman,” the suit alleged.
At least 19 MCPS employee complaints about Beidleman’s misconduct were directed to central office during McKnight’s tenure as superintendent, between October 2021 and July 20, 2023, according to interviews and documents obtained by this reporter and/or the Jackson Lewis report.
“Monifa is taking the stand she didn’t know about Beidleman,” said a former longtime central office leader who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by McKnight. “The superintendent was either aware, which is problematic, or she didn’t know about it and she should have, since it was such a non-secret that everybody knew. So which was it? Neither one’s a good look.”
MoCo360 Executive Editor Anne Tallent contributed reporting to this article.
Alexandra Robbins, a freelance journalist, is the author of “The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession” and other books about education. This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.