Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor on Thursday offered the county school board a preview of his proposed fiscal year 2026 operating budget, which calls for reducing bureaucracy and providing school support teams but did not say how much the district hopes to spend.
“In many ways this should be very unfulfilling and very unrewarding because there are no numbers in this presentation,” Taylor told the board. “I’m going to save all of the numbers for Dec. 18 … but I do want to highlight some themes that are definitely going to be present.”
Board member Brenda Wolff, who represents District 5, said that it was difficult to imagine what the budget would look like because expenditures were not included in Taylor’s proposal.
Taylor noted the board will have the opportunity to dig into the numbers after he presents his complete budget proposal in less than two weeks and will also hear from the community through work sessions and hearings.
“I humbly say, stay tuned for the version that has the numbers,” Taylor said.
With a budget overview now and a more detailed budget to come, Taylor, who took the helm of MCPS in July, is roughly following the same timeline as his predecessors.
He told the board that MCPS will face fiscal constraints on the local and state level but he is planning to address those challenges by “focusing on fundamentals, getting back to the things that matter most.”
The plan comes in the wake of last year’s difficult budget season, in which the school board had to make significant cuts to close a spending gap after the County Council approved $30.5 million less than was requested. The operating budget for fiscal year 2025, which started July 1, is $3.32 billion – the highest amount ever approved for the school system.
Those cuts included the elimination of Montgomery Virtual Academy, the school system’s online learning program that served about 700 students. Also, the district’s Office of the School System Medical Officer was abolished, pre-kindergarten expansion was delayed and class sizes were increased.
School support and organizational structure shifts
In Thursday’s presentation, Taylor said MCPS needed to make county schools instead of the MCPS central office the centerpiece of the school system.
“There’s a level of frustration with the bureaucratic layers and the siloed operations within our school system that needs to be addressed … in a structural way,” Taylor told the school board.
Taylor said doing so provides an opportunity to explore how the system could serve schools differently and provide better “customer service” to parents and families. The system is currently in the midst of reshaping its leadership structure and hiring eight executive positions, according to job postings and MCPS spokesperson Chris Cram.
One way to “break down silos” and support schools is with the creation of cross-functional teams that serve the schools by going out and being in the schools, rather than sitting behind a desk at the school district headquarters, Taylor said.
Some teams already go out to schools, he said, but “coordinating these efforts and putting that under a single direction” will have a “significant impact.”
Taylor also said that support for special education students and emergent multilingual learners needed a “complete revision.”
“This will be a hard and challenging lift, a multi-year lift, but we heard very loud and clear that what we’re doing is not working,” Taylor said.
Physical infrastructure, accountability and employee investment
Addressing concerns with physical infrastructure was another theme in Taylor’s presentation. He noted that there are schools struggling with heating and cooling.
“These things require some really significant investment and a lot of forethought — and it doesn’t stop at HVAC,” Taylor said. “It’s an awful lot of repairs and maintenance that needs to be put into our very robust portfolio of buildings.”
Taylor also mentioned that he plans to address employee retention and recruitment over the next several years with competitive wages and changes to staffing standards.
“We’re going to need to do some big lifts in the next couple of years in terms of how we assign staff through staffing standards,” Taylor said. “This is not something that will be reflected in this budget per se, but it is something that will be a next-to-come.”
His proposed spending plan is also expected to address internal controls and accountability, according to Taylor.
MCPS has faced several issues regarding financial oversight, including a recent report by the county inspector general that said MCPS’s management of an electric bus contract led to “millions of dollars in wasteful spending.” The district also temporarily lost $39.3 million in state construction funding for Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville and recently found that there was a projected deficit for the budget, although Taylor said on Thursday that the trajectory has changed after implementing some changes.
“Our internal controls need a lot of work,” Taylor said.
