A longtime parent activist from Mount Airy has filed as a candidate for the Carroll County Board of Education, joining two incumbents who have declared their candidacies for the three open seats.
A former psychologist and real estate agent, Laura K. Rhodes, 40, describes herself as a "professional full-time volunteer," lending a hand to "whatever group needs me," from her children's schools to her homeowners association and her swim club board.
But of all the groups to which she has donated her time, the PTA's and PTO's have had the most pull, luring Rhodes in 12 years ago when her daughter started kindergarten.
In the years since, she has spent her energies countywide, taking an active role in the Carroll County Council of PTAs and across the state. She travels throughout Maryland, leading workshops for the Maryland PTA and teaching parents how to be advocates for their children. She recently surveyed 600 Carroll parents, gauging their concerns with the school system, and finished her third year running a legislative alert e-mail list through which she dispatched four to 35 e-mails a day about local or state proposals, bills and hearings related to education.
"I got tired of hearing that no one ever heard from parents," Rhodes said. "I thought 'You're not sitting in the right place because where I sit, I hear plenty of things.' So I made it a personal goal the past few years to let parents know when something was being voted on and what was being discussed."
She decided to run for a seat in the five-member school board this year to help restore the 28,000-student district to the system she "fell in love with 12 years ago."
"All these years, I've gone to a good majority of meetings and hearings, I've heard what parents are telling me, I've represented people and I've tried to influence people," said Rhodes, "and I think I'm ready to go from trying to influence votes to being one who has a vote and the ability to enact a change." She filed for the school board race this week.
Incumbents Gary W. Bauer, 55, a pump operator with the Baltimore City Fire Department, and C. Scott Stone, 51, a systems and program analyst with Goucher College, filed for re-election this month.
School board President Susan W. Krebs, 42, whose first term ends in December, has said she plans to run for the newly created South Carroll seat in the Maryland House of Delegates rather than seek a second term on the school board. She has not filed for that seat.