MCPS official who vowed to ignore IG is on Seven Locks task force

A top MCPS official who pledged to ignore the county Inspector General's findings of official wrongdoing over the Seven Locks/Kendale issue is now to be on the county task force to resolve the issue.

MCPS Chief Operating Officer Larry Bowers is to be one of the school system representatives on the task force, according to the Gazette.

The County Council created the task force after Inspector General Thomas Dagley found MCPS to have committed at least four acts of wrongdoing in attempting to force the closure of Seven Locks Elementary School and to build a "replacement" school that the Seven Locks PTA didn't want.

With his back to the wall, Bowers said that he would look into a finding that MCPS failed to follow proper contracting procedures, the Washington Post reported, but he added that he and the school system would ignore the other findings.

Bowers was in league with School Board lawyer Steve Abramoff, who wrote a five page legal paper purporting to show that MCPS is not liable to the county and therefore immune to IG oversight; and with County Council Education Committee Chairman Michael Subin, who also attacked the IG's legitimacy.

Bowers said about the IG report, "In terms of anything else, we’ll certainly not be responding to it."