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—– By: Ann Costantino —–
Lloyd Brown, Baltimore County Public Schools’ Information Technology (IT) director, has resigned from the school system.
An administrator from the district’s Network Support Services department confirmed with The Baltimore Post today that the technology professional will leave his position leading the system’s IT Department on June 15.
An explanation, the department says, will be forthcoming later this afternoon.
Brown hails from Virginia where he worked for Henrico County Public Schools. Former Baltimore County schools superintendent, S. Dallas Dance, PhD, worked at Henrico schools at the same time. The pair worked under then-superintendent, Mark Edwards, PhD, for part of the their employment there.
Under Edward’s leadership, Brown helped to flip Henrico schools into a digital learning district, providing laptops for every child. During that transition, Dance worked for the district as an English teacher for two years, and then as an assistant principal and principal. Edwards is now senior vice president of digital learning at Discovery Education, a vendor of Baltimore County Public Schools.
In 2013, Brown joined Baltimore County schools as the system’s executive director of information technology. He took the position three months after Dance announced his vision to switch the school system to all digital curriculum to be delivered via laptops for every student, a program called STAT, for Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow.
Dance said in 2013 that he was inspired to go all digital in Baltimore County when he noticed technological inequities between the system’s roughly 160 schools.
In 2014, Baltimore County schools began its rollout of devices, starting with 10 “Lighthouse Schools,” also known as pilot schools. Yet, Dance said during a 2016 talk at the CUE Symposium in California that he had no intention of piloting the digital program, but considered the Lighthouse Schools as a way to “start” the permanent transition to all-digital for Baltimore County public school students.
Ryan Imbriale, Baltimore County schools’ executive director, who leads the system’s STAT program and the Department of Innovative Learning, calls the digital transformation “second order change,” or change that has been specifically designed to be irreversible for Baltimore County Public Schools’ students.
In April, the majority of Baltimore County’s school board voted for a $140 million contract to provide 130,000 new laptops for the system’s nearly 113,000 students, 9,000 teachers and staff members. The extra devices, according to emails obtained by The Baltimore Post, are replacement units for potential loss, damage and theft. The system has already spent in excess of $160 million since 2014 on the STAT program.
Over the next seven years, the $140 million contract for the devices will replace the previously leased Hewlett Packard (HP) Revolves that HP has since discontinued. The new HP devices will be leased through twice-winning bidder, Daly Computers.
April’s contract approval served to complete Dance’s mission which was to provide a digital learning environment and device for every student in Baltimore County Public Schools. Next year, all high school students will receive devices — the last grades to receive them after the nearly five-year roll-out to all schools. Brown helped to complete Dance’s mission which was to flip Baltimore County schools to an all digital learning environment.
Brown spoke at conferences around the country while he served as the system’s IT director. He also served on the National Advisory Council on Educational Technology (NACET) and is an Executive Board Member of IMS Global, a non-profit educational and learning technology consortium of ed tech vendors. The company says its technology suppliers are the market leaders in innovation which help school systems move to digital learning and curriculum “faster.”
Brown, who has a wife who works in the system as a nurse’s assistant, worked at Henrico County Public Schools for 14 years — from 1998 to 2012. Former Superintendent Dance worked for Henrico schools from 2001 to 2007.
Dance is currently serving time in a Henrico County jail for perjury, charges he admitted to in March. The former superintendent failed to disclose nearly $147,000 in income he earned consulting for other organizations and school systems as he led the country’s 25th largest school district. Dance is set to be released on August 27, after serving four months of a six-month sentence he was handed in April.
Mr. Brown could not be reached for comment today. An administrator in his office said that he took the day off.
This story will be updated.
