By Nicole Asbury Washington Post December 19th 2024
Montgomery County Public Schools’ superintendent is asking the county to spend roughly $285 million more on the district in its next budget — nearly double the increase in funding it received for the current school year.
Superintendent Thomas Taylor released his recommended $3.6 billion operating budget — his first since joining the district in July — Wednesday in front of school system staff, students and school board members. A majority of the budget covers pay and benefits for the district’s nearly 26,000 employees. But Taylor also is proposing a change in the district’s funding formula to send more money for supplies to schools with a higher population of students who are low-income or are learning English and those with special needs — an increase he dubbed an “equity add-on.”
Taylor is also pitching about 50 new positions in school security and nearly 700 new special-education positions. In return, Taylor said he would cut about 80 positions in the central office — a reduction that is less than 5 percent of the office’s workforce.
Taylor acknowledged that the state’s “financial landscape looks rough” but said he would work with the county council and others to find a way to fully fund the request.
“I would love to come to our funding partners and even to our board of education with a request that is a little bit more in line with community expectations,” Taylor said in an interview. “But I also am compelled to present a needs-based budget, and our needs are severe.”
County Executive Marc Elrich (D), who will recommend his own budget in March, said Taylor’s request was in line with what he anticipated. He said Taylor’s proposal addresses “some of the long-standing problems of the school system,” such as understaffing in special education.
Elrich previously pitched a 10 percent tax increasein 2023 to help the school system cover the costs of teacher salaries and other needs, but the county council instead approved a 4.7 percent hike. In an interview Thursday, he stopped short of saying whether another tax increase could be on the table, adding that he wasn’t sure yet how much of Taylor’s ask exceeds what the county may be able to offer the district for fiscal 2026.
“It exceeds last year by $300 million, but I don’t think it exceeds our planning by $300 million,” he said. “So the jump may not be as big as it appears.”S
State analysts are anticipating a $2 billion budget deficit in the upcoming fiscal year, with the projected gap between revenue and spending expected to widen even more than during the Great Recession. Most of the costs are associated with the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future — a statewide education-reform plan that funnels billions annually toward public schools through a 10-year period, and includes measures to boost teacher pay and expand pre kindergarten.
In Montgomery County, Taylor said the school system expects to allocate nearly $11 million more next year to cover Blueprint-related costs. Most of the allocation will target converting 28 pre kindergarten classrooms into a full day program.
Meanwhile, in nearby Prince George’s County, Superintendent Millard House II cited the projected state deficit while presenting his operating budget proposal this month, warning the next fiscal year would be challenging.
House is requesting a roughly $35 million increase from the county and state above the current budget year, raising its total budget to about $2.9 billion. His budget requests targets mental health supports for students and expands a Chinese, French and Spanish immersion program at Largo High School, among other needs.
Montgomery is home to Maryland’s largest school district, with about 160,000 students and 211 schools.
County officials said this month that it has accumulated more revenue from local income and property taxes than originally projected for the upcoming fiscal year. Still, they cautioned the county’s financial outlook could worsen if cuts made to the federal workforce, as promised by President-elect Donald Trump, materialize.
Montgomery County Council President Kate Stewart (D-District 4) said Wednesday that she was aware of some of the school system’s needs, such as a demand to cover more of the costs’ of employees’ benefits plan. But she said she was surprised by the magnitude of Taylor’s request.
“There’s a lot of issues and needs for members of our community that we’re going to need to be addressing,” Stewart said. “As we look to receiving the budget from the county executive in March, we’re going to need to look at the overall picture and what we’re doing across the county for all of our families and children. Tonight, we got a piece of that.”
In the spring, Montgomery County council members funded 99.2 percent of the school system’s budget request, but there was still a roughly $30 million shortfall. The school board cut a virtual academy and increased class sizes to reconcile the budget gap.
Taylor’s budget recommends anoverall increase of roughly $298 million, but about $11.6 million is anticipated to come from the state. He anticipates that he would be able to keep some employees whose positions are cut, since there are enough vacancies across the school system.
Taylor said his proposed funding model would help schools “better align” their needs with their student population. Previously, schools received a set dollar amount for each student it had enrolled, with some adjustments for inflation for supplies and materials. “Not all schools are created equal, and some schools have more impacted needs than others,” he said.
Taylor also plans to target improving the district’s student performance, which declined after the pandemic. He pitched a “money-back guarantee” that would pledge to reimburse any future graduates who have to take remedial mathematics or literacy courses at Montgomery College starting with the class of 2035. He said ideally the proposal wouldn’t cost the school system any money if the school system does its job effectively, but if any graduate enrolls in those courses, “they could send us the bill.”
Taylor also pledged to improve the district’s performance on the state’s report call, saying he hoped all of the county’s schools would earn four or five stars on the state’s report card by 2035. (The state is currently debating an update of its report cards, including whether to abandon a star rating system.)
Both Taylor’s and House’s recommended budgets head to their respective school boards. After the boards debate and approve a recommended budget, the request is submitted to the county executive — who typically make their own recommendation around March.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/19/montgomery-county-schools-budget-request/