Prince George’s PTA board implodes

Brown to remain president

Thursday, Nov. 17, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Lawrence Jackson Jr.⁄The Gazette Walter Searcy, first vice president of the Prince George’s County PTA, announces that he and three other PTA members are resigning to protest the failure to oust the group’s president, Darren Brown.

Last week’s Wednesday meeting, originally scheduled to be held in the county but moved at the order of the state PTA’s offices in Glen Burnie, was thought by many to be the last meeting for Darren Brown, the county PTA’s embattled president. But Brown remained in the top slot, and many who opposed his presidency resigned in protest.

‘‘We’ve lost four valuable members of our organization,” said First Vice President Walter Searcy, who resigned from the group. ‘‘We cannot and will not support the presidency of Darren Brown at this time.”

The vote came down to a six-to-six split that killed the motion to oust Brown.

The resignations of the executive board members are significant because they draw more attention to an already beleaguered organization that has been struggling with infighting and lagging membership.

The county PTA can run with several vacancies. It has done so several times in the past.

But the protest resignations from the executive board diminish the ability of the county PTA to represent the local PTAs.

The four vacancies can be filled by appointment of the remaining members of the executive board.

Searcy and at least five other members of the 12-member executive board have been at the center of a push to oust Brown for his role in the appropriation of school uniforms for the students of Charles H. Flowers HS in Springdale.

Recently, questions surfaced about Brown and his involvement with an Ohio-based company, Bythwood Sports and Uniform Company, owned by Brown’s brother. Bythwood had helped take measurements and order uniforms for the Flowers PTSA.

Eduardo Barea, the owner of Neil Roberts School Uniform Co., the company that provided the uniforms, said he is still owed about $83,000 for uniforms and expenses incurred in the deal.

Brown has denied any wrongdoing,but Searcy and his supporters have said that Brown should resign to allow the county PTA to move forward with its agenda.

Brown has promised to present an audit of the entire uniform procurement process the PTSA was involved in up to Aug. 22, when he and other supporters claim that school administrators took over the process.

Mary Lehman, another opponent of Brown who sat on the executive board, said that leaving Brown in office with so much controversy swirling around his presidency would leave the organization ‘‘hobbled.”

‘‘I have no intention of returning there,” Lehman told The Gazette. ‘‘We stood up and said ‘we’re not moving forward.’

‘‘I just don’t see us as being productive.”

Lehman also criticized the state PTA for holding the meeting in Glen Burnie instead of in Prince George’s County, where more delegates would have been able to attend easily.

Lehman said she felt the move by the state was an attempt to keep the public and delegate s of the organization in the dark about the controversy overt its leadership.

‘‘The state has been of no help whatsoever,” Lehman of Laurel said. ‘‘It’s so screwy it’s not even funny.”

Lehman said she was asked by state PTA leadership to refrain from speaking about the vote or the meeting to the media or to the county PTA membership.

She refused.

‘‘We owe it to our dues-paying members to tell them what’s going on,” Lehman said.

Carolyn Boston, vice president for membership,and Carol Betts, hospitality chair, also resigned from their posts with Searcy and Lehman.

Charlotte Underwood, an executive board member who voted alongside Brown to keep him in his position, declined to comment for this article.

‘‘I have no comment on that story,” Underwood said.

Darren Brown also declined several offers by The Gazette to comment on the Wednesday vote or what he would do to bring the organization back together.

Donna Hathaway Beck, an education advocate from Upper Marlboro, said that the state should come in and take over the county PTA, much the same way it did in 2000 when it revoked the county group’s charter.

In that instance, there were allegations of money garnered from fund raisers being misused or unaccounted for, as well as voting irregularities for executive board members.

‘‘I think we’re in the middle of November and our focus is on yet another dysfunctional county PTA,” Beck said. ‘‘How effective can they be?” Beck said that all members of the county PTA’s executive board who were responsible for the infighting should resign.

‘‘Everyone in a leadership position ought to step aside,” Beck said. ‘‘They’ve shown what their leadership is about and it isn’t about children.”

E-mail Guy Leonard at gleonard@gazette.net.