A Brooklyn Park resident and Baltimore City Public School teacher filed earlier this month to run for the District 1 seat on the Anne Arundel County Board of Education in November.
Ciera Hurlee, who teaches first grade at Maree G. Farring Elementary School in Baltimore, will seek the seat held by Gloria Dent, who recently announced she is running for reelection. Also running in District 1 are Sarah Lacey, a former County Council member, and Hunter Voss, an economist from Linithicum.
District 1 includes the North County High School cluster and stretches from Brooklyn Park out to Jessup.
Hurlee, 34, moved to Brooklyn Park in 2017 but has lived in Maryland on and off since she graduated from high school in Cockeysville. She felt called to run for the school board after witnessing the controversy over flag bans last year, she said. A policy proposal to ban Pride and Black Lives Matter flags was eventually voted down by the school board.
“They were trying to go after certain ideologies instead of giving children space to figure who and what they are as they try to figure out the world,” she said. “For me, if I was elected, I would want to just support what students want and what teachers need in order to support them.”
As an educator and a mother of two daughters in the school district, and two young boys who haven’t started school, Hurlee feels uniquely aware of what families, teachers and students need to succeed.
“Education is becoming extremely political and not in a way that’s helpful to children or teachers who are trying to help them,” she said. “I think my perspective as a mom, as a teacher was really important and I wanted to make sure I had a hand in influencing the community and in many ways help mold and shape the kids that I have.”
Hurlee is originally from New Jersey. After moving between Maryland to Virginia for college, Hurlee graduated from Rutgers University in 2013. She began teaching in Camden, New Jersey in 2015 before getting engaged and moving back to Maryland and teaching in Washington D.C. Hurlee now lives in Brooklyn Park with her husband and four children.
“As someone who has seen multiple school systems, I think I can help my community,” she said. “I want to make sure we have a board that’s supporting teachers so they can support students. The goal is to make sure that every single child has choice. That decision means knowing all the options that are available. Whether they want to be a lawyer, a hairstylist or own their own business we should be providing them with the tools they need to succeed.”
Nineteen people have filed to run for the seven board seats held by adults. The election is Nov. 5.
