Brenda M. Diaz
Running for school board in Montgomery County At Large
Email: bmdiaz4boe@gmail.com
Website: www.diazforboe.com
Facebook: facebook.com/diaz.for.boe
How old will you be on Election Day (Nov. 3)?
49
Are you currently employed? If so, where, and what is your job title?
Yes, social studies teacher at Fusion Global Academy.
What is the highest level of education that you completed, and where did you get that degree?
Master's of Education, Social Studies from George Washington University.
Why are you running for the school board?
I ran for this board twice because I genuinely believe our public schools are failing children. Not because of lack of funding. Not because of lack of caring people. But because children are not getting the actual opportunities to learn and grow, to be in environments that care for them. And when I say care for them, I mean providing the actual tools they need through academic excellence. Whole books. Rigorous curriculum. Safe classrooms. Teachers who are supported.
I know what it means to be a child whose future depended on institutions stepping up. A gifted and talented program, Prep for Prep, and parents who cared deeply gave me a path from the Bronx to Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
Twenty-five years later, I have taught pre-K through Advanced Placement Government, worked as an English as a second languge educator, a curriculum writer, a softball coach and a building administrator. I am a James Madison fellow. I founded Heart of Joy Learning. I worked with children who cannot read in one of the wealthiest counties in the country, all while watching a board rubber-stamp billion-dollar budgets as the achievement gap widens and buildings crumble.
Only 48.3% of Black students and 34.3% of Hispanic students in Montgomery County Public Schools are proficient in English language arts. Those numbers have barely moved. The achievement gap convicts the governance problem we are facing within Montgomery County Public Schools—and nobody on the board, not even the superintendent, is being held accountable for it.
I cannot watch it happen anymore. I am running to be the independent voice of parents, students and teachers on this board—beholden to no union, no political machine and no county executive. Just the children and their families.
What makes you a good candidate for the board?
I am the only candidate in this race who has actually worked as a teacher in the classroom. I am a veteran educator with more than 20 years in multilingual classrooms—pre-K to high school, English as a second langauge to Advanced Placement. I know what academic excellence requires because I have had to produce it with real children, not from a boardroom.
I began as a Spanish teacher and curriculum coordinator at a progressive private school in Washington, D.C., designing grades three through six curriculum and presenting it at regional conferences. I taught U.S. History, Government and World History at Gaithersburg High School, coached JV softball there and at Wootton High School and served as an Montgomery County Education Association building representative.
That last fact matters. I sat on the union side of the table. I know how collective bargaining shapes policy, how the Apple Ballot works, and how a board that owes its seats to that endorsement stops hearing parents. Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service trained me in history and government. I am a James Madison fellow, a two-time National Endowment of the Humanities Landmark participant and a Harvard Business School Case Method graduate. These have shaped my understanding of how government must respond to the people it serves. I later founded Heart of Joy Learning and now teach social studies at Fusion Global Academy. After 2024 I built the Success Toolkit on DiazForBOE.com so families and teachers share the same evidence.
For more than twenty years, Montgomery County Education Association-endorsed majorities have rubber-stamped budgets, boundaries and closures while testimony, PTAs and local elected officials were ignored. I am not that candidate. I carry no Apple Ballot debt. I answer to parents, students and taxpayers—not to the machine that has held this board. I am arriving to this job with a keen insight into what is required, and to do it working with you.
What is the most important issue facing your school board and what would you do about it if elected?
The most important issues facing Montgomery County families are a leadership and fiduciary failure. Montgomery County Public Schools spends $3.78 billion a year. Yet only 22% of students pass Algebra I. Only 54.9% of third graders read at grade level. Black students are 48.3% proficient in ELA and 22.9% in math; Hispanic students are 34.3% and 15.7%. A 2023 systemwide audit did not move those numbers. This is a moral crisis.
The board's duty is stewardship: every dollar, contract and cut measured against whether it serves children. Yet after the County Council approved a record $143 million increase, Montgomery County Public Schools cut special education resource teachers, social workers and college and career navigators—while Central Office remains far heavier than Fairfax. Capital money meant for roofs, HVAC and mold was raided to fund contracts. Colonel Zadok Magruder High School's ceiling crumbles. Thomas S. Wootton High School was left to rot, then closed. The board is effectively abandoning the children already being failed.
If elected, I will treat academics and fiduciary duty as one job. Require whole books, textbooks, grade-appropriate assignments, explicit reading and math instruction, less screen time and midterms and finals. Enforce the Student Code of Conduct, restore School Resource Officers and replace restorative justice in the Montgomery County Education Association contract with a Teachers' Bill of Rights to bring order back to the classroom. Tie every budget dollar to outcomes. Protect classroom and special-education positions before bureaucracy. Create an independent inspector general. Give parents and community watchdog organizations a real seat at the table. Our children were entrusted to this board. I will fulfill that promise.
Please name a public leader you admire and explain why.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, is the public leader I most admire. He served on both the local and national stage—crafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, co-authoring the Federalist Papers and architecting the Bill of Rights. He earned his convictions through relentless study and preparation.
I am a James Madison fellow because that conviction is central to who I am as an educator. Madison understood that a self-governing republic depends on an educated citizenry—and that power without accountability corrupts. He designed a system of checks precisely because he did not trust any institution to govern itself honestly without one.
That is how I will govern. I will not rubber-stamp what I have not read. I will not approve a contract that has not been scrutinized. I will not silence a parent who has come to testify. Madison wrote that "the people are the only legitimate fountain of power." On a board that has spent 20 years ignoring that fountain, I intend to restore it.
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, passed by the General Assembly in 2021, is a 10-year plan that includes increased funding to support early childhood education, higher teacher starting pay, college/career-readiness standards for high school graduates, and expanded services to multilingual and impoverished families, among other goals. Since the Blueprint's implementation, test scores have increased modestly in many parts of the state, but some school officials complain about the costs and administrative burdens placed on them by the Blueprint. Please tell us your views on the Blueprint and how it is affecting your school district.
The Blueprint for Maryland's Future has worthwhile goals: expanding pre-K access, strengthening professional development for teachers and supporting high-poverty schools. Five years since its passage, enacted over former Gov. Larry Hogan's veto in 2021, the honest assessment is that it has not delivered on its academic promise, at least not in Montgomery County.
The Montgomery County Taxpayers League's Gordie Brenne said it clearly: the Blueprint is "an unfunded mandate" and its implementation by Montgomery County Public Schools has been "too top down." The data supports him. Reading and math proficiency remain essentially flat despite years of Blueprint spending. Resources have concentrated heavily at the elementary level while middle and high school students have been largely left behind.
What concerns me most is how Montgomery County Public Schools has used Blueprint implementation as cover for decisions disconnected from student outcomes. Montgomery County Public Schools is spending $10.9 million in fiscal year 2026 on Blueprint requirements alone—from the same operating budget that just cut 415 student-facing positions. And when Montgomery County Public Schools and the Montgomery County Education Association sought a permanent exemption from Maryland's 180-day school year requirement, the Montgomery County Council of PTAs education committee chairs rightly called it out as prioritizing administrative convenience over learning time.
The Blueprint's goals are not the problem. Accountability-free implementation is. As a board member I will require that every Blueprint dollar received by Montgomery County Public Schools be tied to measurable academic outcomes for every student in every school at every grade level.
Chronic absenteeism has been a problem in many schools since the Covid-19 pandemic. How big of a problem is absenteeism in your school district, and what if anything can the Board of Education do about it?
Chronic absenteeism is still one of Montgomery County Public Schools' quiet academic crises. The rate has eased from 26% after the pandemic to about 22% last year— early 35,000 students missing 18 or more days. The data shows that Hispanic students and English learners miss the most. A child who is not in class cannot catch up in reading or algebra, no matter how large the budget, no matter how dedicated the teacher.
Students stay home when school feels unsafe, exhausting or pointless. The board's job is to change that. Start secondary schools at 8:30 a.m. or later so teenagers can sleep and arrive ready. Take Chromebooks out of the classroom so that distractions are not competing with the teacher and children are challenged to rise through whole books, explicit instruction and knowledge-rich curriculum. Restore School Resource Officers and enforce the Code of Conduct so families trust the building. Expand and protect the programs children love—recess, intramural and varsity sports, music, dance, clubs and community service—so the school day is something they anticipate rather than endure. Then make the work itself worth showing up for: grade-level assignments, teachers with authority, classrooms that are orderly and intellectually serious. Attendance follows culture. If school is safe, structured and demanding, more children will come.
Are you satisfied with your school district's policy on AI use by students? If so, why? If not, what would you suggest to improve the AI policy?
No. I am not satisfied.
Montgomery County Public Schools elementary students still have ready access to unvetted generative AI on school Chromebooks. Brookings’ 2026 study concluded that, at this point, the risks of generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits. Cognitive offloading—students outsourcing thinking instead of developing it—is already happening.
My position is clear. No generative AI for student work, elementary through high school. Teachers may not use AI to grade. Lesson planning is where professional judgment and knowledge of individual students meet; that relationship cannot be outsourced.
I will move to replace education technology policy IGS with a clear, enforceable standard and require Montgomery County Public Schools to report publicly on compliance each semester. The policy should be simple: students do the thinking. AI does not.
Youth mental health has been a growing concern for years now. Do you think your school district has the resources and personnel in place to deal with this issue adequately? If not, what would you suggest to improve the situation?
No. The fiscal year 2027 budget made it worse. The board voted 7-1 to eliminate about 43 social workers and cancel 118 planned special education resource-teacher positions. Those staff identify struggling students and keep children regulated. Cutting them in a mental health crisis is a misaligned priority.
Youth mental health is inseparable from the school day. For many children, school is the place they can shine when home is hard. We have to build that on purpose: grade-appropriate work, restored gifted and talented programs, sports, music, clubs, tutoring, real discipline and daily outdoor play. Recess and time off screens reduce anxiety more cheaply than another layer of central staffing.
Safety, structure, enrichment and academic confidence are the mental health infrastructure that matters most. Protect student-facing support. Expand recess. Get kids off Chromebooks and into activities where they belong.
Do you think there are circumstances when books should be removed from school libraries? If so, what kind of books should be removed, and who should make those decisions?
I oppose pulling library books because a political group objects to their perspective. That is censorship. The only legitimate grounds are age-inappropriate sexual content no reasonable person would consider suitable for that developmental level, or material that is factually false and presented as fact. Those decisions belong to trained school librarians working with their communities through the process Montgomery County Public Schools already has—not pressure campaigns from any direction.
The actual book ban in Montgomery County was removing whole books and physical textbooks from classrooms. They replaced the greats with Chromebook passages—excerpts, handouts, disorganized folders—leaving children fumbling through fragments of literature their families cannot even follow along with at home. That is the real assault on reading. I will reverse it. Every child should read whole books that build knowledge and curiosity.
