At the end of February, the PGCPS Board of Education passed a motion recommending that $500,000 be allocated to fund AP testing for the 2017-2018 school year. However, throughout and after the discussion of how much should be spent on tests for PGCPS students, board members have raised questions about the county’s loss of a $6.4 million federal grant for the Head Start program earlier in the school year, and whether that may have played a role in the decrease in AP funding. Student Member of the Board Juwan Blocker brought up the issue up at a board meeting during a discussion of the funding.

“Let’s not forget that we lost a 6.5 million dollar grant, which was for Head Start,” he said at the February 23rd meeting. “Now what I’m wondering is if we would be having this discussion if it wasn’t for the negligence of certain people at administration, which is why we lost funding in the first place.”

The loss of the grant occurred after a federal investigation found evidence of multiple instances of abuse by Head Start staff, including one incident in which a three-year-old was forced to mop up his own urine after an accident. The teacher then took a photo of him mopping and sent it and a mocking text to the boy’s mother, who reported it to PGCPS. However, when the teacher in question was cleared to return to school, the mother took out a protective order preventing her from entering any building where the three-year-old was present.

Other confirmed incidents include one in which a five-year-old left school unnoticed and walked home alone, and two children were punished for playing during naptime by being forced to hold heavy objects over their heads. PGCPS was notified of the termination of the $6.4 millions grant on August 12th, 2016.

In the aftermath of the Head Start scandal becoming public, questions were also raised regarding how much PGCPS officials knew, and when, after documents were obtained and released by WUSA9. These included emails from the mother of the three-year-old abused and an email from George Margolies, then-Chief of Staff for the PGCPS CEO. The mother’s email expressed anger and disappointment upon dropping her son off at school only to see that the teacher had been allowed to return to work. “I trusted sending my son to Head Start and that trust is gone, more so today than ever before!” the email reads. The teacher was not suspended again with recommendation for firing until after the scandal became public in August of 2016. The email was sent to multiple PGCPS officials, including CEO Kevin Maxwell, according to the released documents.

The email from Maxwell’s Chief of Staff George Margolies described an argument he had with Board of Education Vice Chair Carolyn Boston regarding whether to discuss the Head Start abuse public in a Board of Education meeting, which ended with a “compromise” that would not involve making it a public agenda item. Margolies wrote that he had “scars on [his] back” from the discussion.

After the documents were made public by WUSA9, outrage spread throughout the county, resulting in Maxwell asking Margolies to step down. However, there were also calls for Maxwell’s resignation, one of which came from the local chapter of the NAACP.

While these events occurred months ago, concerns continue to be voiced within the county, including when it comes to whether or not there is a connection between the scandal and the loss of AP funding. In an interview with The Raider Review, Blocker pointed out that a letter was sent home notifying families of the termination of AP funding about a month after the loss of the Head Start grant became public.

When Blocker angrily implied that this contributed to changes in AP funding at the board meeting during a discussion on AP tests, Chairman of the Board Segun Eubanks turned to Maxwell to ask if he wished to clarify Blocker’s comments, an offer that Maxwell declined because “there’s no point in discussing things that aren’t true.” Blocker then countered this point with “I have the facts.”