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Andrea Chamblee
From Ballotpedia
This page was last updated during the official's most recent election or appointment. Please contact us with any updates.
Andrea Chamblee is a member of the Howard County Public Schools Board of Education in Maryland, representing District 5. She assumed office on December 2, 2024. Her current term ends on December 4, 2028.
Chamblee ran for election to the Howard County Public Schools Board of Education to represent District 5 in Maryland. She won in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Chamblee completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Andrea Chamblee was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1983 and a law degree from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in 1986. Her career experience includes working as an educator and attorney. She has been affiliated with the George Washington School of Medicine and Public Health.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Howard County Public Schools, Maryland, elections (2024)
General election
General election for Howard County Public Schools Board of Education District 5
Andrea Chamblee defeated Trent Kittleman in the general election for Howard County Public Schools Board of Education District 5 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Andrea Chamblee (Nonpartisan)  | 52.5 | 19,313 |
 | Trent Kittleman (Nonpartisan) | 47.0 | 17,310 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.5 | 182 | ||
| Total votes: 36,805 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for Howard County Public Schools Board of Education District 5
Trent Kittleman and Andrea Chamblee defeated Catherine Carter in the primary for Howard County Public Schools Board of Education District 5 on May 14, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Trent Kittleman (Nonpartisan) | 43.1 | 5,870 |
| ✔ | | Andrea Chamblee (Nonpartisan) | 32.5 | 4,430 |
 | Catherine Carter (Nonpartisan) | 24.4 | 3,324 | |
| Total votes: 13,624 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
Chamblee received the following endorsements.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Andrea Chamblee completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Chamblee's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I have 35+ years of experience as a Food and Drug Attorney, and I am a trained FDA investigator. I am a compliance expert in the areas of policy, procedure, and performance audits.I have an extensive background in mediation, negotiation, and successfully building consensus. As an educator and a Fellow in my profession, I train people to perform these activities. As a department supervisor at the FDA, I had to carefully prepare budget proposals for resources, training, compensation, benefits and all other operational expenses that were required to carry out the duties of our office with high quality performance. I am very accustomed to finding solutions in resource-limited environments.
As one of Maryland’s foremost safety advocates, I am all too familiar with the challenges our students and school staff face every day in the areas of physical safety, violence prevention, mental/emotional health, and the health/safety risks that come with being inside aging, crowded buildings. My career and advocacy training have made me highly adept at identifying contributing factors to problems and addressing solutions that get to root causes. Bandaids are not good enough. In my work with national advocacy groups, I’ve gained access to mounds of data about school system issues, showing what has been tried in other areas, what has worked well, and what hasn’t. My frame of reference is broad and I am grounded in the knowledge that making poor systemic decisions can almost always be avoided.
- Budget-The county and HCPSS need to comb through the granular details of the finances and find areas where money can be saved without harming the system. Cutting hundreds of teachers and increasing class sizes may be the most efficient way to reduce costs but it certainly isn’t what’s best for the HCPSS community. This year specifically was a real missed opportunity to comb through each department and identify all the smaller expenses that we could do without. (Why does HCPSS pay for 3 Live-streaming services after we've invested into the Google Meets ecosystem?) Trimming fat one sliver at a time is harder and requires a concerted effort, but our school communities deserve leaders who will do exactly that. We have to be more strategic.
- Safety-My safety advocacy is the result of my husband’s tragic murder. The positions I’ve taken and the topics I’ve gotten involved with are all things that have made people safer. I have spoken numerous times before both houses of the Maryland State Legislature on school and firearm safety, to close the background check loophole, to require ghost guns to be serialized so they can be traced, and to require parents to be notified when there are shooter drills at schools because many of our kids are traumatized by these events. I do not regret any of my positions. Almost all Americans including responsible gun owners agree with these positions. Kids who don't feel safe can't learn. Teachers who don't feel safe can't teach.
- The legacies of deferred maintenance and the probation for our treatment of Special Ed students are shameful. This is a safety issue for our students and staff. Kids who don’t feel safe can’t learn. It’s a pocketbook issue because this will only get more expensive over time to get this work done. HCPSS needs more schools. Portables are subpar learning environments. Overcrowding affects every student and every teacher in every hour of every class. I am open to exploring any and all funding options, including P3s, that will get us the money needed to catch up on deferred maintenance and construct new adequately sized buildings. Again, we have to work with housing experts to improve the accuracy of enrollment projections.
I grew up in this County and I love our community. I’m passionate about public health, safety, and education. These three things are more interwoven now than ever. I fear for the students with asthma who struggle to breathe the low quality indoor air in many of our buildings, I hurt for the kids who are different and feel they don’t belong, I am appalled by the insufficient care provided to our students with special needs, and I am deeply concerned by the re-energized book banning movement that seeks to devalue large segments of the human population. It has been so frustrating to watch the school system and the BOE struggle to carry out their most basic duties. And I’m disheartened by how little is done to reach members of our community,
I spent my formative years watching in-depth news programs with my parents. I consider it the "home schooling" component to my public education. I watched the Watergate hearings and saw firsthand what happens when politicians and the people they surround themselves with are more concerned with power and re-election than the will of voters, and how it can taint a legacy. I read "All the Presidents Men" and decided to study journalism and go on to law school with special attention to local events that affect people's lives, homes and families ever day.
Accountability: We need to be accountable for making hard decisions that benefit our community. No more meetings with the politicians responsible for our budget and getting their permission to ask for less than what we need to avoid embarrassing public figures.
Transparency: We need to explain those hard decisions to our constituents and show them where there money is going and why.
HCPSS needs someone who will do the hard work necessary to find the right solutions, who will go find those unheard voices so that all perspectives are understood, who knows how to effectively run large, complex systems, and someone who is committed to doing it all, out in the open, where the public can see.
As one of Maryland’s foremost safety advocates, I am all too familiar with the challenges our students and school staff face every day in the areas of physical safety, violence prevention, mental/emotional health, and the health/safety risks that come with being inside aging, crowded buildings. My career and advocacy training have made me highly adept at identifying contributing factors to problems and addressing solutions that get to root causes. Bandaids are not good enough. In my work with national advocacy groups, I’ve gained access to mounds of data about school system issues, showing what has been tried in other areas, what has worked well, and what hasn’t. My frame of reference is broad and I am grounded in the knowledge that making poor systemic decisions can almost always be avoided.
The school board is responsible for the condition of our schools. The buildings keep our kids safe, or not, and learning, or not. Their condition affects our property values and their futures. We have avoided investing in our schools for too long and they are falling down on our kids, literally and figuratively. Moreover, overcrowded buildings impact everyone. Portables are substandard learning environments, in addition to being unsafe. And moldy air makes people sick. We can’t keep kicking this can down the road any longer.
Since I started my safety advocacy in 2018, Marland has risen to the #7 spot in the nation in gun safety. I won't stop till we are #1. I also have a legacy with my students. I stay in touch with exchange students and with my classroom students and they know I am here for them for whatever job-related or other issue where they need my support.
My Dad left his government job to build boats, and did that until the state bought our house for the Route 32 interchange in Savage, MD. Residents from the 1970s may remember his boatyard, clearly visible from Route 1, north of Laurel. I worked at home for my parents in my Dad's business, washing the cars of his customers. As I got older, I worked in Columbia Mall for a jewelry store. When it relocated, I worked for a jewelry kiosk on the ground floor. I remember when a player I recognized from the Baltimore Bullets (Wes Useld was easily recognizable) asked to try on a ring, and the owner told me not to take jewelry out of the case for Black people. I quit and went to work at the < McDonald's upstairs.
My favorite book changes often, but "To Kill A Mockingbird" has been in the top 5 since I read it as a student in Glenelg High School.
Kids who aren't safe can't learn. Teachers who aren't safe can't teach. Students and staff see the low value we place on their welfare as our schools fail at this core responsibility. As one of Maryland’s foremost safety advocates, I am all too familiar with the challenges our students and school staff face every day in the areas of physical safety, violence prevention, mental/emotional health, and the health/safety risks that come with being inside aging, crowded buildings. My career and advocacy training have made me highly adept at identifying contributing factors to problems and addressing solutions that get to root causes. Bandaids are not good enough. In my work with national advocacy groups, I’ve gained access to mounds of data about school system issues, showing what has been tried in other areas, what has worked well, and what hasn’t. My frame of reference is broad and I am grounded in the knowledge that making poor systemic decisions can almost always be avoided.
Everyone in Howard County is a constituent of every school board member, whether they are parents or students, young or old, grandparents or child-free, homeowners or renters, small business owners or salaried, working or looking for work. HCPSS is responsible for the children and teens in our community and that means we are responsible for our community. HCPSS is the largest employer in the county, and has an impact on customers and neighbors. The quality of our schools affects the value of our neighborhoods and the quality of our life.
I attended Howard County Public Schools, and my mother taught here. I belong to several PTAs in District 5 and I am a highly engaged member of the HCPSS Community Advisory Council that reports directly to the Board of Education. The CAC and the PTSA advisory committees are important voices in the decision-making process. However, many parents - and students - can't attend meetings during the work day and struggle to get home in time to attend later meetings. After-school activities also conflict with these opportunities. I would visit the schools and parents myself to make sure all their voices are heard.
I would also visit with community members who aren't parents or students any more, as well as business leaders and interested members who want a voice in how their tax dollars are used. Business partners can help us see what kids who work after school need; neighbors can contribute what they experience and discuss how they can get more involved. We need to engage all these contributors.
I would also visit with community members who aren't parents or students any more, as well as business leaders and interested members who want a voice in how their tax dollars are used. Business partners can help us see what kids who work after school need; neighbors can contribute what they experience and discuss how they can get more involved. We need to engage all these contributors.
I participated in a career day with students who wanted to practice their interviewing skills and talk about applying for jobs and colleges. This was one example of an exercise that was enriching for me as well as the students. We need to engage our local employers, colleges, universities, and trade associations to expose our students to the opportunities they have because of their education, and after this phase of it is behind them.
Whether it is in my capacity as a board member or as a county resident, I will continue to advocate for new revenue streams that can be used to fund the millions needed to end deferred maintenance in our schools.
I am deeply passionate about public service and public safety. My entire adult life has been devoted to both. About 20 years ago when I began teaching graduate courses, I discovered I had a passion for teaching too, so I never stopped.
We need evidence-based disciplinary practices that address the root causes of disruptive behavior. Student and staff safety should be prioritized when determining the appropriateness of disciplinary measures. Punishment for serious infractions should include mandatory referrals to behavior management tools, mentoring opportunities, and counseling. Schools that prioritize deliberate, intentional relationships and community building have significantly fewer behavior issues. Too often such initiatives are abandoned before they have had enough time to make a difference. There is no quick fix. It takes time and extra effort to change school climate and culture.
My life changed violently with the mass shooting at the Annapolis Capital where my husband and 4 of his coworkers were murdered in that mass shooting. I am using my tragedy as a catalyst to keep on improving public safety with firearms (Moms Demand/Everytown), advocating successfully in Annapolis with our legislators. Guns are the number one killer of our children and teens in the US. But I also couldn’t continue hosting and recruiting kids to study in this country. We can’t promise their parents that their kids will come home.
Gun violence is not the only preventable safety issue we ask our kids to face every day. They face bullying, a mental health crisis, poor physical environments, and other issues that make students and teachers less safe in our schools. Students who aren’t well, can’t learn well. I know I can leverage my expertise, commitment, and personal connections to benefit our students and HCPSS. I am their champion.
Gun violence is not the only preventable safety issue we ask our kids to face every day. They face bullying, a mental health crisis, poor physical environments, and other issues that make students and teachers less safe in our schools. Students who aren’t well, can’t learn well. I know I can leverage my expertise, commitment, and personal connections to benefit our students and HCPSS. I am their champion.
When I was an HCPSS student, I was redistricted five times before high school. I’m very well aware of how disruptive redistricting is to students and their families. We should do it as infrequently as possible and only as a response to capacity issues. And when we have to do it, we must bend over backwards to be as transparent as possible and make plenty of opportunities for community feedback.
HCEA (Apple ballot), The People's Voice, Columbia Democratic Club, Ellicott City and Western Howard County Democratic Club.
Students who don't feel safe can't learn. Teachers who don't feel safe can't teach. I will prioritize their safety. I will show them how we value them by fighting for clean air and water in their schools, safe walk zones with adequate lighting, and working plumbing and fire extinguishers in their schools. I will fight for our Special Education kids who are disproportionately targeted for discipline and their teachers who are inadequately trained in how to respond to their needs. I will fight for them to have the books they want to read, that show students how people like them can survive and thrive. Students who see teachers and characters in books and movies who look like them do better in school, with better attendance and graduation rates.
I attended Howard County Public Schools, and my mother taught here. I belong to several PTAs in District 5 and I am a highly engaged member of the HCPSS Community Advisory Council that reports directly to the Board of Education. The CAC and the PTSA advisory committees are important voices in the decision-making process. However, many parents - and students - can't attend meetings during the work day and struggle to get home in time to attend later meetings. After school activities also conflict with these opportunities. I would visit the schools and parents myself to make sure all their voices are heard.
New hires shouldn’t need a second job to make ends meet, and salary increases for veteran teachers shouldn’t stop as they approach retirement. We have to pay teachers well above mandated minimums if we want to recruit and keep talented people in the classroom.
We must prioritize morale. Teachers should like where they work and who they work for. They should not have to constantly feel the toxic uncertainty of not knowing whether their positions are being cut.
Successful recruiting is heavily reliant on a high-functioning Human Resources department. If we take too long to respond to applicants or give them too many unnecessary hoops to jump through, they will go to the employer who offers them a job first..
In an effort to encourage more young people to enter the profession, we must initiate more university partnerships, offer grant-funded incentives like housing vouchers, and advocate for college loan forgiveness.
Voters deserve to have all the facts that go into decision making, and deserve to be heard when those decisions are forming. They deserve to know who much it will cost to give them what they need, what they expect, and what they want and what are the consequences to their homes and families if those decisions are delayed or avoided. It is really that simple.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
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Candidate Howard County Public Schools Board of Education District 5 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on April 14, 2024
