Parents Await Appeal to State in Protest of School Cell Phone Towers

Some Montgomery County parents are awaiting a response from the Maryland Board of Education on their appeal that protests cell phone towers in school yards.

The group represented by the Parents Coalition of Montgomery County accuses local school administrators of violating state law.

The Montgomery County Public Schools granted telecommunications companies six leases to put up cell phone towers.

“The appeal has to do with how the towers are placed at the schools,” Janis Sartucci, a member of the Parents Coalition of Montgomery County, told Germantown Patch.

“The board of education president was supposed to have signed off on the leases for the cell phone towers. The signature is that of Jerry Weast, the [former] superintendent. The wrong person has signed for these leases. What that means for the public is that the cell phone towers have been placed on school property without authorization of the voters.”

A contributing issue is which schools were chosen for the towers. All of them are in low-income neighborhoods, Sartucci said.

In high-income neighborhoods, “You don’t see any cell towers on school property,” she said.

Leases on the cell phone towers brought Montgomery County schools about $700,000 last year.

Sartucci says suspicions have arisen about how the money is being distributed.

State law requires any revenue the school system receives to be turned over to the county council to decide how it is spent, the Parents Coalition's appeal says.

“The cell phone revenue has never been brought to the county council for appropriation,” Sartucci said. “It appears the money is split up. Some of it goes into a slush fund for the principals. The rest of the money goes into the real estate development fund for the school system and lord knows we don’t know what happens to that money.”

The new Montgomery County Public Schools superintendent, Joshua Starr, has not commented on the cell phone tower dispute.

However, school officials say lease agreements between Montgomery County and telecommunications companies are not new or unusual. The county has signed 29 leases with companies such as Verizon, T-Mobile and Cingular to put towers at 12 sites across the county.

Lesli Maxwell, Montgomery County Public Schools spokeswoman, said about the Parents Coalition’s appeal to block the towers at schoolyards, “We believe it is without merit.”

Nevertheless, the Parents Coalition has supporters on the Montgomery County Board of Education.

Among them is board member Laura Berthiaume, who said she was concerned that cell phone towers could threaten the health of schoolchildren.

“My recent vote against a cell tower at an elementary school was based on the lack of any peer-reviewed scientific study proving that having a cell phone tower within a close proximity is safe for children under 12,” she said.