The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland filed suit Monday night against the Somerset County Board of Education, asking a judge to force the disclosure of public records from a small Eastern Shore school district that’s become a hotbed of MAGA activism.

The ACLU accuses the county board of obscuring the facts and decision-making behind hiring its lawyers, cutting ties with its superintendent and restricting its book purchases.

The lawsuit comes after Somerset’s school board denied the ACLU’s requests for hundreds of documents under the Maryland Public Information Act relating to those decisions and others in the past year.

The alleged failure to produce records as required under Maryland law is “part of a broader pattern of using secrecy as a tool to avoid accountability, advance certain board members’ ideological agenda, and unlawfully expand board of education power,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit is the culmination of the ACLU and the community trying to get information about board decisions that affect education, said Deborah Jeon, the ACLU of Maryland’s legal director.

“The way they have denied access to information exacerbates the sense that the school board is conducting operations in the shadows,” she said. “The community has the right to understand how decisions are made about their schools.”

Matthew Lankford, chair of the school board, and Victoria Green, public relations supervisor for the school system, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Gordana Schifanelli, the attorney representing the board, said in an email that they had not seen the lawsuit and would respond once they had.

The Banner requested some of the same documents and was denied as well. Attorneys representing The Banner wrote to the school board saying that the denial did not have a legal basis.

Among the documents Somerset’s board declined to release was one showing how much it paid its former superintendent to leave.

Nearly a year ago, Somerset’s school board fired Ava Tasker-Mitchell one year into her four-year contract, then had to reinstate her after state education officials ruled that Somerset had not followed the proper procedures.

The county board and Tasker-Mitchell later parted ways under an agreement that has never been made public. Tasker-Mitchell’s contract called for her to receive a 3% increase in pay each of the three years of her contract. If she had stayed, she would have received a total of $639,000 for her remaining years, but superintendents are often paid more under buyout agreements like the one Tasker-Mitchell signed.

The Banner asked for the separation agreement and for the records showing how much she had been paid to leave, but the school system said it was a personnel record that could not be released. Other Maryland school districts have publicly released such payouts.

The ACLU also sought documents related to the board’s firing of its former legal counsel and hiring of Mark and Gordana Schifanelli. That decision was made behind closed doors and without seeking competitive bids, according to a report by Maryland’s Inspector General for Education.

Gordana Schifanelli ran for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with Dan Cox and lost. She also helped lead parents in a 2020 campaign against a Black superintendent in Queen Anne’s County who had expressed support for Black Lives Matter.

Tasker-Mitchell is also Black, and some county residents believed that the board’s actions to get rid of her were motivated by racism.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU says it also requested documents related to the board’s rejection of a new English curriculum in July, against the advice of its staff and superintendent. The board had wanted to review each of the books in the curriculum before it adopted the curriculum.

About a week later, the inspector general said the board’s failure to pass a new curriculum could result in the loss of state funding. The board passed school system staff’s second choice as a temporary measure, according to the ACLU lawsuit.

Board chair Matthew Lankford led an effort to revise policies to “assume complete control over school library content,” the lawsuit alleged. The board also attempted to lay off all of the school system’s librarians last year, but the county commissioners gave the school system $1 million to ensure that the librarians stayed in their jobs.

Then last month, Lankford and another board member said the board had to approve individually any book that was purchased by the school district. During a discussion at a recent school board meeting, staff said they had not purchased any books so far this year. Lankford said, “Good.”

The board’s actions, the lawsuit said, reduce educational opportunities for students in Somerset schools, and the documents should be made public to better understand the context of the decision-making.

The lawsuit was filed in the Baltimore City Circuit Court on Monday against Lankford and the Somerset County school board. It seeks the release of records and attorneys fees.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.