Julie Walsh for Carroll County Board of Education
Hello and welcome! I’m glad you’re here. My name is Julie Walsh. I am a mother to five children. I am a volunteer. I am an advocate. I am an involved member of my community. And I am a candidate for the Board of Education of Carroll County, Maryland.
Please look around this site to learn who I am, why I’ve decided to run, what I stand for, and what I hope to achieve for the students, teachers, staff, and families of Carroll County Public Schools.
If my story or my priorities appeal to you, I’d be honored to have your help in this campaign. You’ll find opportunities here to donate, to volunteer, to spread the word, and to stay informed.
And regardless of where you stand in this race, I would love to hear from you. Please tell me about your experiences with, your concerns about, and your priorities for our public schools here in Carroll County.
Who is Julie Walsh?
Julie Walsh is a mother of five children (aged 8 to 15) attending four Carroll County Public Schools. She lives with her husband and children in Mount Airy, where she and her family are deeply involved in their community.
Julie has long been interested in and had experience with politics, but never saw herself as a potential candidate until the last months of 2025. She came to this decision slowly, after an intense year of advocacy on behalf of the County’s schools, and after recognizing that community members had begun to approach her as a resource and guide.
Raised in a family active in local politics, Julie followed political news from a young age and went on to study political science in college. She then spent a decade working first for the federal government, and then as a registered lobbyist (for a nonprofit organization) in Annapolis.
When Julie’s first child was born in 2010, she left paid work to become a stay-at-home mother. In the years since, Julie has been an active, involved member of her community, volunteering at schools and church and other nonprofits, and taking on leadership roles where such help was needed.
In February of 2025, Julie Walsh became aware of the crisis brewing in Carroll County Public Schools regarding the system’s struggle to implement Maryland’s Blueprint for Education. Through her role as PTO president for two of her children’s schools, Julie connected with women across the County who had been following the issue for a while, and she offered them her help. While Julie was new to the subject of Blueprint, she was well acquainted with Annapolis, with the mechanics of legislating, and with political advocacy.
Together, Julie and the other women founded the Carroll Education Coalition. The group encouraged Carroll County’s families to weigh in on both the County and State levels. And Julie herself spoke before the Carroll County Board of Education, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners, the Maryland General Assembly, and Maryland’s Accountability and Implementation Board.
(Please click here to view a video of Julie testifying in Annapolis before a joint hearing of two Senate and two House of Delegates committees. And click here and here to view videos of Julie speaking at meetings of the Carroll County Board of Commissioners.)
Julie, with her coalition partner Lisa Maisano, drove back-and-forth to Annapolis and Westminster, attended public hearings and meetings, made phone calls, and walked the halls of the State Senate and House of Delegates, asking those in power to pay attention to the looming crisis in Carroll.
Thankfully, their efforts – and the efforts of many other committed Carroll County residents – paid off. Carroll County Public Schools was granted a temporary waiver for elements of its Blueprint compliance requirements, and it was sent consultants who are working with the school system to identify a better way of implementing Blueprint in Carroll.
Why is Julie running?
But the challenges for Carroll County Public Schools are not over. Today the school system faces a declining enrollment as well as a growing financial hole (which is due in large part to rising costs stemming from inflation.) It needs to figure out how to serve Carroll’s students in a way that is consistent with the expectations of County residents. It needs to figure out how to provide for its capital needs related to deteriorating facilities and insufficient building sites. And it needs to wrangle with the increasingly pressing question of the proper role of technology in the classroom.
These challenges – and the people they touch – deserve Board of Education members who will dig in, work hard, collaborate well, and view themselves as passionate advocates for our children and our schools.
If Julie is elected to the Carroll County Board of Education, she will do just that.
What are Julie’s priorities and principles?
If elected to the Carroll County Board of Education, Julie intends to focus on the following two priorities. She has opinions on other matters related to education policy, but these two priorities are where she plans to put her time and effort. To learn about Julie’s thoughts on other matters, as well as the principles that drive her, please click here.
The overall health of the system. Given what Julie has learned about the leanness of Carroll County Public Schools, and how little wiggle room it has to absorb the fiscal challenges that come its way – whether from a State law like the Blueprint for Maryland’s Education or the economic reality of rising inflation – she sees no way around the need to work to secure sufficient resources for the system. The residents of Carroll County should have the public school system it expects – and its residents do not expect high class sizes due to teacher cuts, or cuts to programs that, for generations, have been viewed as essential to the school experience.
The proper role of technology in the classroom. Because students needed to use laptops for distance learning during the pandemic, and because our society becomes ever more dependent on technology over time, today’s classroom has come to rely heavily on laptops and other technology. There are advantages to this development – frequent assessments allow educators to track students’ progress and target attention to students who are not grasping the content they’ve been taught. But there are also disadvantages – distractions, difficulties in submitting assignments, barriers to parents being able to help their children learn, and a disconnect from some of the basic skills (like note-taking and writing by hand) that help children absorb what they’ve been taught. Julie thinks it’s time for the school system to reevaluate the proper role of technology in the classroom, with an aim to teach in ways that will help students focus on and absorb the content they are being taught, while not losing sight of the importance of ensuring that students are not left behind. She believes this topic deserves attention on its own, not as an attempt at a cost-savings measure. A less technology-dependent classroom is not necessarily a less expensive one, given the cost of purchasing textbooks, workbooks, and paper, and reworking curricula to incorporate them.
Click here to learn more about Julie’s priorities and principles.
How can you connect with the campaign?
We would love to connect with you over the course of this campaign.
If Julie’s story or priorities appeal to you, we’d be honored to have your help. You’ll find opportunities here to donate, to volunteer, to spread the word, and to stay informed.
And regardless of where you stand in this race, we would love to hear from you. Please weigh in to tell us about your experiences with, your concerns about, and your priorities for our public schools here in Carroll County, Maryland.
Make a Donation
If you support Julie and what she stands for, we would appreciate your financial support. You may make an electronic donation below, or you may mail a check to the address listed.
Friends of Julie Walsh
P.O. Box 1023
Mt. Airy, MD 21771
*When mailing a check, please include a note containing your name, address, occupation, and employer.