The Price of Your Parental Voice Silenced: $38,617.00

Two Super PACs, Strong Maryland and Marylanders for a Better Future, want you to accept the MCPS status quo. No longer.

The MCPS Board of Education’s most fundamental obligation is stewardship, the responsible management of public resources in service of our children. In Montgomery County, that obligation is being broken on four fronts at once:

• School buildings are crumbling while capital funds are raided to hide budget failures;

• A superintendent with a record $143 million budget increase is cutting the teachers and social workers who serve the most vulnerable students first;

• There is no independent Inspector General with the authority to stop wasteful spending before the damage is done;

• A board beholden to the MCEA Apple Ballot endorsement machine has systematically shut out the parents and community watchdogs doing the accountability work it refuses to do.

We can simplify this problem to its most basic core: a pernicious leadership problem. Our most precious treasure, our children, are paying for it with a stubborn and widening achievement gap. And you, the parent, are paying for it with your silenced voice.

The cost of shutting out Montgomery County’s parental voice from our public schools this 2026 primary season: $18,125, spent by Strong Maryland, a PAC strongly aligned with the Maryland State Education Association (MSEA), the state teachers’ union, solely to attack my campaign. This is on top of the $20,492 spent against me by Marylanders for a Better Future, also aligned with MSEA, in the Board of Education general election in 2024 — $3,632 in direct mail and $16,860 in online ads — money that went to prop up an opponent who went on to vote to close Wootton High School, the third highest performing school in the state, and who supports the removal of School Resource Officers. This 2026 primary election season, MSEA and their allies are determined to silence the one voice on this ballot fiercely dedicated to academic excellence, closing the achievement gap, responsible budget allocation, real school safety, and genuine parental involvement in Montgomery County’s public schools.

Let’s paint a picture of the type of Board of Education member MSEA and their allies believe is exemplary. MSEA’s exemplary Board of Education member is one who rubberstamps policies that push you, the parent, out of the decision-making process. They would love someone who will continue to ignore community watchdog organizations such as the Montgomery County Taxpayers League and the Parents Coalition, which have been doing the Board’s accountability work for years. MSEA approves Board members who nod along, and then nod off, while parents show up year after year to testify about mold in their children’s classrooms and auditoriums with ceiling collapses before a theatrical performance — as Magruder PTSA President Kim Glassman documented firsthand. MSEA actually likes it when Board of Education members turn a blind eye to the violence and drug use in the hallways — where Kennedy High School teacher David Gebler testified before the Board that the halls “reek of marijuana” and that drug use is “daily, rampant, and repeated” — and the steady decline in the quality of education our children receive. A simple “thanks for your comments” — then sidelining you from any actual decision-making — is exactly what MSEA is looking for in their candidate. The cost of buying their dreamy candidate: $18,125 for this primary season. Yup! MSEA is happy to stop me in order to stop you.

The hyperpartisanship of Strong Maryland’s page defines the intersection where buffoonery and polarization meet. In a school board race — a nonpartisan one, at that — about mold in classrooms, crumbling auditoriums, and children who cannot read at grade level, Strong Maryland’s opening move is to fearmonger you into orange-man-bad trigger-mania-smithereens by featuring a picture of me with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump while I speak to voters about the state of public education in our county.

Strong Maryland spent $18,125 to convince you that talking to voters about mold in classrooms and crumbling auditoriums makes you a MAGA extremist in Montgomery County.

You don’t see Republican heads exploding because I spoke at a Latino Democratic Club meeting in November 2025 about my candidacy and the state of our public schools.

Me and my corny smile at the Latino Democratic Club Happy Hour. Extremist alert!

Montgomery County voters have their head on their shoulders. They’re not falling for this gaslighting manipulative trap. We just want good schools!

MSEA’s ally, Strong Maryland, is troubled that I tweeted “it’s time to DOGE MCPS” — a pointed call for the kind of financial accountability that a district paying $700,000 a year in promotional swag and locking itself into a $3 million annual lease on an unusable warehouse clearly needs. Strong Maryland apparently prefers our current Board of Education’s consent agenda, where mistakes like this take place because no one asks where our $3.78 billion goes. They know we are sick of the waste and fraud. They just don't care.

And their closing argument? That I am proudly not endorsed by our local teachers’ union, Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA). They are indeed very much correct. I met with MCEA in 2024, did not care to receive their endorsement, and have since made my independence from union control a centerpiece of this campaign. Strong Maryland presents this as a gotcha. I present it as PRECISELY the point. The union that spent $20,492 to defeat me in 2024 and $18,125 to stop me now is not a neutral arbiter of what is best for Montgomery County’s children. MCPS and the Board of Education prove it. Time and time again. It is a political machine protecting its own power, which doesn’t include you. George Carlin said it best: “It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it.”

The club. We are over it.

Brenda M. Diaz is a candidate for Montgomery County Board of Education, At-Large. Early Voting: June 11- 18, 2026. Primary Election: June 23, 2026. Learn more at diazforboe.com