By Nicole Asbury Washington Post July 10th 2024
Sami Saeed first got a glimpse last summerof how intense his term would beas the student representative of Maryland’s largest school district. Protesters were flooding Montgomery County’s school board meetings to call for the district to let families opt out of storybooks featuring LGBTQ characters.
“Is this normal?” he recalled asking others on the board. Long-serving memberssaid they could not recollect a protest of that magnitude.
Saeed, 18, said it was the start of a year that was marked by seismic crises. In addition to the calls for an opt-out policy, the school system also faced scrutiny for its handling of employees’ reports of misconduct after The Washington Post reported a middle school principal was promoted while he was under investigation for sexual harassment. Several administrators left, including former superintendent Monifa B. McKnight, which led to asearch for a new system leader.
It was a big shift from his original plans for the term. Coming in, Saeed thought he would focus on top issues for students like school lunches, mental health, safety and curriculum. But most of the year, he said, he was dealing with one administrative fallout after another — while still going to classes at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville and listening to students.
“I’ve done more crisis management than I have educational policy, which is something I never thought I would say by the end of this,” he said in a recent interview after his term ended July 1.S
Montgomery County has had a student representative since 1978, according to its website. Maryland allows student school board members voting rights, though that has been challenged in court. In Montgomery, student members can vote on most issues save for negative personnel actions, like a termination or other disciplinary measure. They can vote on personnel action involving the superintendent.
Saeed gaves peeches and participated in Q&A sessions with students while campaigning for the board seat. He was one of two finalists for the role, and then was elected by the school system’s middle- and high-schoolers in April 2023.
Lynne Harris, an at-large member on the school board, said Saeed came to each meeting as a “coequal member.” He showed up regularly well-informed and he was often one of the first people to speak.
“He was really fearless in being a full member, but he was always so incredibly excited and optimistic,” Harris said. “His year as [the student member] was the hardest year the board has had to deal with … but you would not know from seeing the way he served.
The debate over the opt-out policy early in his term was challenging, Saeed said.
Several Muslim and Christian families protested the school system’s decision to disallow opt-outs for books with LGBTQ characters, arguing it violated their religious rights under the First Amendment. Saeed recalled that he was going to a board meeting to speak about financial literacy. But after seeing the protests, he decided to instead speak in favor of the district’s decision. He spoke of how students had “overwhelming support for this measure” and argued that the books cannot be opted out of.
Right after, several protesters pulled him aside to persuade him of their viewpoint. Saeed said it caused a huge internal conflict. His dad is Muslim and his mom is an atheist, but he said they let him make his own decision about his religious identity. He is not Muslim, but he explained that many people assumed he was because he is Arab. When he disagreed publicly with the protests, he said he felt like he was betraying people in his own community.
“It was incredibly uncomfortable because I felt like, ‘Am I not being true to who I should be — to what my heritage is?’ But I need to stand with my principles,” he said. “But that was really a struggle, because I felt like I came into my role and I already let a whole group of people down before I even started.”
The district was in tumult again a few weeks later after The Post reported that a middle school principal, Joel Beidleman, was promoted last year despite being the subject of six teachers’ complaints. (Beidleman has denied many of the allegations.) He was warned in an email about a potential issue with a staff member, but learned the details from The Post’s reporting. Several investigations followed, and district and school board members also were admonished by the county council. The school system is now reworking its protocols and polices to address issues raised.
“It was so tough. Some of the things I was learning were so troubling,” Saeed said. “I had to go to a student meeting or something with a big smile on my face. The students would be talking about the same problems that they were talking about during my campaign, but my head is somewhere else.”
He said McKnight’s resignation in February was one of the most stressful periods of his term. Because it was a personnel issue, he said he can’t share what happened, and has never even talked to his parents or any of his friends about it. But at the time, he was panicking. He said the situation caused him sleepless nights and he worried about getting gray hairs.
Still, he tried to carve out time to focus onother issues, like school safety and security,something that touched him personally. Back in 2022, Saeed said he was targeted in a shooting threat that was posted online but that investigators later determined was not credible. His high school has had students come into the building with guns.
In October, Saeed successfully proposed a school safety resolution that would mandate the school system expand a student ID pilot program, implement a strategy to increase monitoring bathrooms and target substance use in schools. The measure called for the district to give an update in April. But when the time came, he learned little progress had been made on the request, he said.
“That was a huge, huge, huge let down,” he said. “I was shocked that the urgency was not there, because you’re dealing with kids’ lives.”
He said he met regularly with school officials on the issue. Now,six high schools have installed vape detectors this past school year, and the school system plans to use money from a legal settlement with JUUL to install them in all high schools.
And even amid all the upheaval this past school year, Saeed was able to accomplish one of his biggest goals: changing the district’s homework policy. The changes — including language that would encourage teachers to avoid assigning homework over the weekends when possible — were unanimously approved by the school board in June.
In his final meeting last month, Saeed voted to hire Thomas Taylor as superintendent. He said the hire was like “striking gold,” pointing to Taylor’s history as a graduate of Montgomery County schools. Taylor immediately stuck out to him during the interview process, and he is confident that Taylor cares about the students.
In his final speech, Saeed characterized becoming the student member of the board as one of the best decisions he’s made — along with deleting Twitter.