Shane Pendergrass knows what it’s like to have her views dismissed out of hand. As a young mother serving on a school design committee in Howard County during the 1980s, her input was summarily rejected by those in charge. “Open classrooms” were the fad at the time, she recalled during a recent interview in her Annapolis office, and as a former art teacher, she knew the trend was ill-suited to the needs of educators and students.
