Shortly after a MAGA-aligned majority took control of Somerset County’s school board in last year’s election, they got to work.

They passed a policy on what flags could be flown, attempted to usurp the superintendent’s decision-making power, and assumed control of decisions on which library books are purchased.

Then they came for the school librarians. And that was too much.

On a May night, dozens of parents and teachers waited for two hours while the school board met behind closed doors to discuss the school superintendent’s performance. When the board emerged, it quickly adjourned with no discussion.

Joe Hylton, a Black parent of three children and a truck driver, started filming board members as the meeting broke up, asking the questions on everyone’s mind. Why was the board proposing to cut every school librarian position? Why weren’t they willing to have a discussion with the public?

Board Chair Matthew Lankford, not happy with Hylton’s questions, called the police, saying there was an aggressive and threatening man outside the board offices. The incident — which Hylton recorded and felt was motivated by race — was resolved without arrests or charges. Lankford, who is white, is seen in the video walking to the back of his car, which had a Trump 2024 sticker.

Lankford declined an interview.

The next day, rumors circulated on Facebook that the board had fired Superintendent Ava Tasker-Mitchell in the closed-door session. The board had not announced a decision on Tasker-Mitchell, but people had noticed that the superintendent had not been at school graduations.

Two days later, Tasker-Mitchell was back in her office, and word on the street was that she had been reinstated by the state school superintendent.

A MAGA-led board in a conservative Eastern Shore county axing its Black superintendent might not be surprising. But the reaction from the community was, with Black and white residents rallying in support of Tasker-Mitchell and the state education department stepping in on her behalf and scrutinizing the school board’s decisions.

There are now standing room-only crowds at school board meetings and teachers are wearing T-shirts that read “We bank with ATM,” a reference to Ava Tasker-Mitchell. The board is battling with both Black and white parents, and the county board of commissioners — including its three Republican members — have voiced their support for Tasker-Mitchell.

“We have all banded together,” said Kendra Clavon, whose son attends Somerset schools. “We are a quaint, family-friendly town.”

In the past two months, the Caucus of African American Leaders and the NAACP called a meeting for residents to discuss the issue. Such meetings are usually small, Clavon said, but that night the room was filled with residents — both Black and white. They wanted to help Tasker-Mitchell improve their schools and push back against Lankford.

The superintendent has two decades of experience in top-level administrative positions in school systems in Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties, and is just one year into the job. She is overseeing seven schools with 2,700 students.

When Tasker-Mitchell started her job, Lankford was turning up to board meetings voicing concerns. Few paid him attention, but he had the support of the Delmarva Parent Teacher Coalition, a conservative advocacy group based in Salisbury with an active Facebook page that comments on Somerset County education.

Then Lankford and a conservative woman were elected to the five-person board in November 2024.

By February, they had begun their overhaul of school system policies and had ended its long-time relationship with an Annapolis-based attorney who represents several Maryland school systems.

In his place, they hired Marc and Gordana Schifanelli, the running mate of Donald Trump-endorsed 2022 Republican governor candidate Dan Cox. The Schifanellis’ practice had not included education law.

The Schifanellis had helped get more conservative members elected to the Queen Anne’s County school board and called for the the county’s first Black superintendent to resign. Eventually, she did leave and filed a discrimination complaint.

After the pandemic ignited a parent backlash to “take back the schools,” Schifanelli tried to build a movement in the Baltimore suburbs, where she held meetings with parents to describe how to overthrow the status quo. The efforts didn’t get many conservatives elected to school boards.

Now, she has landed in Somerset County.

Princess Anne — surrounded by corn and soybeans that grow out of flat lands carved by coves and rivers — is Somerset County’s center. The quaint town is also a bit faded, with dozens of clapboard Victorian houses, their paint peeling and wraparound porches listing.

Attempts at renovation dot the main street, including at nearby Teackle Mansion, a 200-year-old waterfront brick house.

In 1992, the school board decided not to renew the contract of H. DeWayne Whittington, who was the first Black superintendent outside of Baltimore to head a Maryland school system, according to The Washington Post. Wittington was awarded $800,000 after he brought suit against the board. The jury also required the county to name a school after him.

A second Black superintendent hired more than a decade ago didn’t have his contract renewed.

Tasker-Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment, but she has not backed down in the face of criticism from the board.

In May, she filed a request to have the state school board remove Lankford, according to documents received in a public records request. There is no explanation in the documents about why Tasker-Mitchell is asking for Lankford’s removal.

During board meetings, Lankford has at times cut off the superintendent when she was speaking and chastised the county’s teachers. At a meeting several days after the parking lot encounter, he read a statement saying educators had spread rumors and conspiracies to “fire up and motivate the political base. ... The purpose was an attempt to intimidate and harass members with an organized ambush.”

The board, he said, would not be intimidated. “Spreading lies to the media, invading personal space, illegally recording board members outside of a meeting, perpetrating violence and civil disorder will not work,” he said. He said the board would “continue to remove DEI from our schools.”

Barbara Hicks, a teacher and vice president of the union representing Somerset County educators, said the changes have caused upheaval in the system. “There is uncertainty, anxiety, tension,” she said.

Now Tasker-Mitchell’s job hangs in the balance, but she has supporters at the local and state levels.

The Somerset County commissioners sided with her when the school board attempted to cut $1 million from the budget for librarians. County governments don’t usually give a school system more money than it asks for, but did so after Lankford said he didn’t want the funding.

The commissioners also sent the board a letter voicing its support for Tasker-Mitchell.

The Maryland State Board of Education, too, has extended a 60-day stay allowing Tasker-Mitchell to remain in her job until an appeal is heard.

And late last week, Maryland’s inspector general for education, Richard Henry, issued two reports, both questioning the legality of some of the Somerset school board’s decisions. First, Henry suggested that the state could withhold funds from the county’s schools if the school board failed to approve a new English curriculum by the end of August. The curriculum had been written and piloted over 18 months, but the board said it hadn’t vetted the books yet.

The state had found the existing curriculum substandard years ago.

In addition, Henry said the board may have violated state law and the guarantees of freedom of speech by passing a policy that transferred decisions over what books will be in the library from the librarians to the school board.

Tasker-Mitchell spent months listening to parents, teachers and students talk about what was working and what needed improving in a district that is one of the lowest-performing in the state, Claven said.

In a school system where more than half of the students are children of color, she said, the MAGA agenda isn’t going to be popular.

Joe Hylton, the parent, has become the most outspoken of the community leaders. He sees the attempted firing of the superintendent as a modern-day lynching, in the last Maryland county to record a lynching in 1933.

“The Lord is looking at all of us to see how people in my community react. Will they stay in the dark or will they go toward the light,” Hylton said. “I think we are being judged on what kind of characters we actually have.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Kendra Clavon's name.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.