For Hilary Jacobsohn, a fifth-grade special education teacher at Burning Tree Elementary School in Bethesda, a lack of adequate funding for increased student needs has led to what she says is an “understaffing crisis.”
“We desperately need more educators, better paid paraeducators, so we can keep those crucial positions filled,” Jacobsohn said.
Jacobsohn was one of more than 130 people who attended County Executive Marc Elrich’s Monday night forum on the upcoming operating budget for fiscal 2026, which begins July 1. During the session, Elrich detailed the many fiscal challenges facing Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) and the county as a whole while parents, staff and other community members urged elected officials to fund the needs of teachers and students.
The virtual forum gave community members an opportunity to press Elrich on the education aspects of the budget and share their perspectives on what MCPS needs. The forum was originally scheduled to be held in person at Julius West Middle School in Rockville, but was moved online due to high carbon monoxide levels from a leak discovered Monday in the school’s boiler room.
Elrich noted the county executive and County Council have the power to recommend and approve budgets but can’t tell the school district how to spend the money it receives or add items the district hasn’t requested.
“We have lots of ability to appropriate money and not much control of how the money gets spent,” Elrich said.
Upcoming expenses
The county is also facing several funding requirement pressures in the upcoming budget, Elrich said. Those requirements include spending for the state’s 2021 landmark education legislation Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, maintaining per-student costs and infrastructure demands.
The Blueprint requires school districts to take a number of steps, including expanding pre-kindergarten seats, increasing educator pay and providing additional resources for struggling students. Elrich said the county hasn’t “fully” unraveled what it will cost to implement some of the requirements.
The county is also facing other expenses, including the revitalization of stormwater infrastructure.
Faced with many challenges, Elrich said he doesn’t see a realistic way of meeting the school district’s fiscal needs “within the confines of how we do business today.”
Echoing previous comments, Elrich said he believed taxes in Montgomery County needed to restructure its taxing systems similar to what exists in Northern Virginia’s jurisdictions. Most notably, Elrich highlighted the use of special taxing districts to tax development and commercial property to fund transportation projects.
“If we could take our capital transportation projects and put them into the special taxing district and take them out of the capital budget, we now save up some money that can be applied to schools,” Elrich said.
Impact of spending cuts, wasted funding
While the county is looking toward a new budget cycle, MCPS continues to deal with the fallout of spending cuts required by the County Council’s passage of the fiscal 2025 county operating budget.
In May, the council approved a $7.1 billion county operating budget for fiscal year 2025, including $3.32 billion for MCPS. The budget included the highest-ever amount of funding for MCPS, but was $30.5 million less than the amount the school board originally requested from county officials.
The $30 million deficit led to increased class sizes, delays in pre-K expansion and the elimination of the Montgomery Virtual Academy and the Office of the School System Medical Officer.
At the time, council President Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) said the school board’s need to close the $30 million gap was a “management issue” and not a “fiscal issue.” However, board President Karla Silvestre told reporters at the time that budget cuts were a fiscal issue, and the “numbers just simply did not add up to what the board had requested.”
The district has also faced issues with oversight and mistakes leading to lost or wasted funding. The Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General released a report in July that found MCPS wasted “millions” by not enforcing an electric bus contract. On Thursday, Superintendent Thomas Taylor announced that the district temporarily lost $39.3 million for the ongoing construction of Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville due to its state aid calculation errors dating back to 2021.
Spend more on students
At Monday’s virtual forum, most of the attendees asked Elrich and the council to fully fund the school system, citing the impact of spending cuts such as increased class sizes and a lack of aides to assist with classes.
Tania Perez-Fuentes, a staff member in MCPS’s Career Readiness Education Academy (CREA), said MCPS and the council need to “prioritize vulnerable students” such as those in CREA. According to the MCPS website, CREA is “an academic and career readiness education program for older English learners in MCPS” that offers opportunities such as earning industry certifications and preparing for the GED exam.
“The budget cut is affecting us. We are having resignations [of staff],” Perez-Fuentes said. “We are a skeleton crew. And this is a population that is in dire need of support.”
Jacobsohn, the special education teacher at Burning Tree, noted that the district’s per pupil funding now is roughly 20% less than it was in 2009, while the number of special education and English learners has increased. According to Elrich’s presentation, the county was spending $16,000 per student in 2010, when adjusted for inflation. Now the county is spending $13,000 per student.
Brigid Howe, president of the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, encouraged Elrich to focus on accountability and oversight so that “wasteful expenditures don’t keep us from accomplishing the important work we need to do in order to address the gaps in academic achievement and ongoing safety and security concerns for our students.”
Elrich said he’s hoping to develop a “higher level of cooperation” with the school district, so the county government receives the district’s proposed budget earlier in the process. The county government typically doesn’t receive budget numbers from the district until the county government has produced its budget, Elrich said.
“We’re hoping that we can work with [MCPS] this time and [have them] understand these are going to be the limits of where we can go and have them be a part of figuring out how we make this budget work,” Elrich said.
