Eastern Shore school board paid $525,000 for superintendent to leave

Somerset County’s school board paid its school superintendent Ava Tasker-Mitchell $525,000 to leave her position last year, according to recently released settlement documents.

Tasker-Mitchell’s departure came after the board attempted to fire her in June 2025 for insubordination. The Maryland State Department of Education intervened, first reinstating her while she appealed her firing and then ruling that she had been fired without due process.

Tasker-Mitchell and Somerset County Public Schools ultimately agreed to part ways in October, but the school board denied public records requests from The Banner and the ACLU of Maryland seeking the settlement agreement, claiming it was confidential.

The ACLU then sued the school board in April, alleging that the board failed to produce records as required under Maryland law. A Somerset County judge ordered the board to release the settlement agreement last month.

Tasker-Mitchell said through her attorney that she has no comment.

School board chair Matthew Lankford did not respond to a request for comment.

Maryland law requires school boards to give their superintendents four-year contracts and specifies that boards can only fire their superintendents for limited reasons, all of which have to do with serious or poor behavior, such as malfeasance or insubordination. Superintendents cannot be fired over policy disagreements.

After Tasker-Mitchell was hired in the summer of 2024, two newly elected board members helped steer the board in a more conservative direction. The board began to have disagreements with Tasker-Mitchell, beginning in the spring of 2025, over policies they were implementing.

When it attempted to fire her, the Somerset board claimed that Tasker-Mitchell had been insubordinate and incompetent, according to two Maryland State Board of Education opinions in October. Tasker-Mitchell refused to heed a demand, the Somerset school board claimed, that she remove information from the county schools website outlining protocols to protect student privacy if immigration officers attempted to interview or detain students, the opinions said.

Tasker-Mitchell had also asked the state board to remove Lankford, according to the opinion. She claimed Lankford threatened her over the phone and she feared for her safety.

Tasker-Mitchell’s contract called for her to receive a 3% increase in pay each of the three years of her contract. She was hired at an annual salary of $205,000. If she had stayed for the remainder of her contract, Tasker-Mitchell would have been paid an additional $639,000 in salary.

After Tasker-Mitchell’s departure, the school board hired former Dorchester County Superintendent David Bromwell as an interim superintendent. The school board voted in February to give Bromwell a four-year contract that began July 1.

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