What does the Apple Ballot tell you?
Not much, but it matters anyway.
The Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) endorses candidates in local races on their influential Apple Ballot. I’ll be writing more about the upcoming June primaries as they approach. This post explains how the MCEA endorses candidates, and why I don’t find their endorsement informative.
[If you’re curious about the budget situation I described last time, it’s still a nail biter.]
What’s the Apple Ballot?
The Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) is the local teachers’ union, and for every election, they consider candidate responses to their questionnaire, interview candidates, and choose whom to endorse. They release their endorsements on the “Apple Ballot.”
Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Apples and Pears. ca. 1891-92.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960
Why are teachers’ union endorsements important?
“Board of Education candidates just can’t win in MoCo without the Apple Ballot endorsement.” People say this all the time. It isn’t always true, but it doesn’t feel like a reach when the MCEA itself calls the Apple Ballot “successful.” Beyond MCPS, research finds teachers’ union endorsements matter – a lot – in determining the outcomes of school board elections.
Part of why the Apple Ballot matters is a resource story. Consider its reach:
MCEA mobilizes volunteers to hand out physical sample ballots indicating who is endorsed at polling sites.
MCEA can communicate its recommendations even more strongly to its own large membership. MCEA has over 14,000 members; in the 2022 primary, about 140,000 votes were cast for Board of Education.
In the 2024 election, the Maryland state teachers’ union gave $134,995 to a PAC supporting Apple Ballot candidates in Montgomery County. That’s more than the sum of individual contributions to all Board of Education candidates who ran.
But there’s more to it. The endorsement sends a signal to voters. I know and respect people who care about public education and use the Apple Ballot as a shortcut for how a candidate will govern – in both directions. Some vote the Apple Ballot because they interpret the endorsement as a signal that candidates will be good for students. Others use the Apple Ballot to know who not to vote for, because they interpret the endorsement as a signal that candidates will prioritize keeping the union happy over what’s best for students.
How does MCEA decide whom to endorse?
The MCEA does their own research, but unfortunately they don’t share any of it with the public in a way that could help you judge for yourself.
Source: MCEA.
What’s on the candidate questionnaire?
There are two questionnaires, one for Board of Education and one for County Council.
MCEA questions, verbatim, for BOE candidates:
Why are you running for this position? What personal attributes, characteristics, and experiences make you the right candidate for this position?
The BOE will be making significant boundary changes. As a BOE Member what would be your priorities in making these decisions?
The BOE will be making significant program changes (e.g. county wide magnet programs, consortia, regional program models). As a BOE Member what would be your priorities in making these decisions?
Too much teaching time is currently spent on standardized testing in MCPS. What is your plan to bring MCPS in compliance with the 2017 Less Testing, More Learning Act (HB461)? How do you see standardized testing interacting with the grading and reporting policy?
Do you support employee Paid Family Leave policies for professional, supporting services, and administrative staff? Please explain your position.
Districts all over the country are working to recruit and retain diverse educators. In MCPS there is considerable room for improvement in addressing educator recruitment and retention. How will you address critical concerns with educator recruitment and retention?
State your view of the contract negotiations process between the Board of Education and MCEA. What do you see as your role in that process?
What makes you the ideal candidate to facilitate and build relationships with the County Council that prioritize fully funding the budget?
What is your understanding of the nature of the relationship between the Board and Superintendent? How do you foresee yourself working within this structure?
What was your reaction to Mahmoud v. Taylor? Given the decision, how would you plan to operationalize parental opt-out to minimize the impact on educators?
Given the growing diversity of Montgomery County students, how will you support our special populations? Please address each of the following specifically:
Emerging Multilingual Learners (EML)
Special Education
Low Socioeconomic
How will you use your position to protect Montgomery County educators, students, and residents in the face of threats from the federal government and ICE, and given the recent rollback of rights for immigrants, the LGBTQIA community, and other marginalized communities?
As a Board member, would you support and advocate for lower class sizes? Do you believe that the Board’s class size guidelines should be required, or merely advisory? Please explain your response.
As a member of the Board of Education, how do you balance honoring ratified contracts with other priorities, especially in tight fiscal times?
During the budget presentation, Dr. Taylor referenced a 2024 infrastructure task force report stating that there is a $385.5 million capital investment backlog of repairs needed to the HVAC systems alone. Additionally, the MCEA/MCPS Collective Bargaining Agreement states “all future classrooms and gymnasiums shall be air-conditioned and all existing non-air-conditioned classrooms and gymnasiums shall be air-conditioned as soon as funds permit.” What steps will you take to secure this needed funding?
What are your thoughts about the MCPS practice of continually contracting out public school services to private employees (e.g. Speech Language Services, Mental Health services)? What changes to MCPS policies and practices would you recommend to build in-system resources that meet professional recommended ratios?
What will you do to remove barriers and protect student access to an inclusive and representative curriculum in MCPS?
The Apple Ballot has been successful due to strong brand recognition and the trust the community has in educators to know what our schools and communities need. The strength of the Apple Ballot is diminished when candidates and elected officials on the Apple Ballot endorse non-Apple Ballot candidates. Recognizing the importance of educator voice, especially in education-specific elections, will you refrain from endorsing non-Apple Ballot Board of Education candidates? (emphasis added)
Please share an overview of your campaign, including your key endorsements, fundraising, campaign plan, and why you believe you will be a competitive candidate?
I’d be interested in candidate answers to most of these questions, though many of them are quite leading and probably yield a bunch of similar answers. For example, see bolded #18 about loyalty to the Apple Ballot. (It also appears on the County Council questionnaire.)
I asked Claude to answer the Apple Ballot loyalty question in a way likely to please MCEA. Here’s what he gave me:
“Yes. I respect the Apple Ballot process and the trust the community places in MCEA’s judgment about who will best represent educators and students. I will not undermine that by endorsing candidates who haven’t earned that trust.”
I then asked him for an answer unlikely to get the endorsement, and he wrote this:
“I can’t make that commitment in advance. I’ll vote my own judgment about who will serve students well. If that occasionally differs from MCEA’s judgment, I think voters are better served by my honesty about that than by a pledge I might not be able to keep.”
However much I might prefer to have board members who vote their own judgment once elected, I also want board members who are strategic enough to get elected, so I don’t hold it against candidates who answer… strategically. But still, this question (which seems new this year) gives me the ick.
What information does the MCEA share with the public about their endorsements?
A list of names and offices and the blank questionnaires. That’s it. MCEA does not release the completed questionnaires. This leaves voters to infer that the MCEA endorses candidates who share MCEA’s positions. The questions alone, even without any answers, are one source of information on MCEA’s priorities. Let’s turn to some other sources on their website.
What are the 3 B’s?
MCEA says 2026 is all about the B’s: bargaining, budget, and ballots. It’s a very big year for MCEA and the county on these fronts.
Bargaining doesn’t happen every year–the current contract is for 2023-2027, and negotiations for the next one must start at least nine months before it expires June 30, 2027.
The operating budget is an annual process but is more of (or just more visibly?) a nightmare than usual this year (rapidly changing story, but here’s a recent update).
Board of Education seats are up for election in staggered four-year terms, always in even years. All County Council seats are open every four years, including 2026, and three incumbents are stepping down as members to run for County Executive, making races especially competitive. The County Executive term is also four years, and there’s no incumbent due to term limits.
The three B’s are deeply intertwined.
Ballots matter for bargaining, because the elected Board of Education must sign the contract, and what they are willing to sign may affect whether they get endorsed when they run for re-election. If the interests of the public diverge from the interests of the union, this would put electeds in a bind.
Bargaining matters for budget, because the terms of the collectively bargained contract drive the amount in the MCPS operating budget request (more in my post on why the County Council is facing such bad budget options). And the budget could matter for future bargaining – or even revisiting past agreements.
Will the budget matter at the ballot box? The MCPS budget affects not just its own spend (which most visibly translates to staffing), but also the whole County budget, including spending on other public services, taxes, and how soon structural deficits will strike. Some of these things are more salient to voters, and some are more salient to the union. This year, there’s very little time for voters to forget the budget (and which electeds voted for what) before the June primaries. Organizations who make endorsements in the future will have no trouble remembering.
MCEA also posts some local advocacy priorities. The four currently listed local priorities all involve state legislative advocacy. One of these was to allow counties to charge different residential and commercial property tax rates, presumably to make it politically feasible to collect more property tax revenue. It didn’t make it through the legislative session. The remaining three priorities asked state legislators to make rules applying only to MCPS:
to pay Board of Education members the same salaries as state delegates (which I explained my support for earlier, and did not become law);
to set special local food procurement reporting requirements for MCPS, with increasing targets over time (status as of publication: this had passed the legislature but hadn’t been signed by the governor); and
to allow MCPS (only, not other Maryland school districts) to avoid the requirement of at least 180 instructional days of school (this didn’t become law; see my calendar post).
Why did the MCEA want the potential for fewer days of school in the year? To prioritize the interests of its members. The public’s interests are far broader and often in conflict: enhancing the student experience, strengthening democracy and the future workforce, minimizing income and property tax payments, maintaining the County’s creditworthiness, and ensuring quality provision of public services beyond education.
Does the Apple Ballot help or hurt?
I’ve been voting in Montgomery County for a decade. I do my own candidate research, and I’ve supported candidates with and without the MCEA endorsement. I choose based on whatever signal I can derive about their competence and values, looking to their records over their messaging. Over time, the Apple Ballot hasn’t reliably predicted who I think is the best pick for a given position, but it also hasn’t reliably predicted who I think is worst. For my own vote, the Apple Ballot is irrelevant.
The MCEA’s Apple Ballot should represent the interests of its members. The unreleased questionnaire answers and the loyalty oath are clearly part of their strategy for doing so, which prompts some questions.
Do voters understand MCEA’s interests and candidates’ positions? And do they have access to other signals they trust about candidates? While other organizations make endorsements, none rival the Apple Ballot in their reach, especially since The Washington Post no longer makes endorsements.
Pop quiz
If you were intrigued by MCEA’s support for state legislation on how MCPS (only) procures local food, here’s a chance to dig in. Here’s the bill and the fiscal and policy note.
How much would this law cost MCPS?
a. One full-time staff position to oversee (no dollar estimate provided)
b. One-time contractual services to establish tracking system (no dollar estimate provided)
c. Unspecified increased costs from increased purchasing from certified vendors
d. All of the above, and state funds may appear to offset some of these
e. All of the above, conditional on state funds provided to fully offset these
Answer key
d. See page 3 of the fiscal and policy note under Local Expenditures. One full-time position in MCPS probably sounded like a lighter lift back when MCEA posted these priorities than it does this week.
Extra credit
Adam Pagnucco speculated on the origins of the Apple Ballot loyalty oath question this fall at Montgomery Perspectives.
Exit ticket
Share your frequent, low-stakes feedback with me, either by replying to this email or submitting anonymously. I always welcome your story ideas, questions, suggestions, and corrections. And if you enjoyed this post, I’d be grateful if you share it (social media, listserv, group chat, etc.).