Editor’s note: This story, originally published at 8:50 p.m. Dec. 18, 2024, was updated at 10:47 a.m. Dec. 19, 2024, to clarify funding for turnover expenses.
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor is proposing a $3.61 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2026 – representing a nearly 9% increase over current spending – that he says is an attempt to provide “long-term stability” within the district.
“I would love to say that this budget is a budget that will move MCPS forward in terms of innovation, that it will fulfill all of our hopes and dreams. But the reality is that it is not,” Taylor told MoCo306 on Wednesday afternoon before presenting his proposal to community members. “There are a lot of budget vegetables that we need to eat in this budget just to become stable and solvent.”
The proposed $298.7 million increase comes in the wake of a difficult budget season earlier this year, in which the county school board had to make significant cuts to close a spending gap after the County Council approved a fiscal year 2025 MCPS operating budget that was $30.5 million less in spending than was requested. The operating budget for fiscal year 2025, which ends June 30, is $3.32 billion. Fiscal year 2026 starts July 1.
Earlier this month, Taylor presented an overview without dollar amounts of his fiscal year 2026 spending plan. He presented the entire budget proposal Wednesday night, discussing the themes of “focusing on fundamentals,” supporting schools and the need to eat “budget vegetables.”
The nearly $300 million addition will go toward an expected 3.25% base salary increase for staff, the addition of 688 special education positions, plus providing $40 million for an “underfunded” employee benefit plan and $5.47 million for an equity addition to the school material funding formula, among other items.
The budget also includes a roughly $7 million cut due to the reorganization of the district’s central office, which includes a reduction of 81 positions.
Taylor also outlined two promises that he says the district will fulfill by 2035: reimbursement for families for the cost of remedial math and literacy courses at Montgomery College for any MCPS graduate who needs additional support; and meeting the expectation that every MCPS school achieves at least a four-star rating on the state’s annual report card.
Julie Yang (Dist. 3), the newly elected school board president, told MoCo360 that the board would carefully review the budget proposal to ensure that its needs as well as those of the MCPS community were met.
After Taylor’s presentation, County Council President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4) said the council faced a daunting task dealing with the proposed increase in spending, the complex needs of the community and uncertainties that may come when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. However, she noted Taylor had clearly laid out the school system’s needs.
Staff pay raises, more staffing for special ed, EML and security
The largest expenditure of the budget, Taylor said, is an expected 3.25% increase to base salaries — for a total increase of $186.2 million. Taylor said this is on par with the salary increase the county government is projecting for its employees.
During the budget presentation, Taylor said teachers and paraprofessionals are facing a pay deficit when their salaries are compared to the cost of living.
Taylor’s budget also recommends adding 688 special education positions – at a cost of almost $46.7 million — and adding 47 staff for Emergent Multilingual Learners (EML), which would cost $4.28 million.
“There’s frustrations about how we’ve staffed special education and how we’ve staffed EML and the services that we’re providing,” Taylor said. “It’s heartbreaking. The heartbreaking news that I have to share tonight — they’re right.”
He said the district hasn’t been following its own staffing guidelines in those two areas, so the proposed staffing additions would be meeting the bare minimum for the programs.
“These are our most vulnerable learners, and we owe it to them, not just by law, but morally to provide a better level of service,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s recommendation also includes adding 52 security positions, which would cost roughly $3.2 million. About $6.2 million will also go toward position reclassification for paraprofessionals, Taylor said during his presentation.
The budget proposal, however, doesn’t include a reduction in class sizes, something Taylor said he wished he was addressing but isn’t because of the high cost of the other expenditures that he is proposing. This year, class sizes were increased by one student to help close the spending gap in the fiscal year 2025 budget.
“A lot of the strategies that you’ll see represented in this budget are the first year of multi-year plans to improve the school system,” Taylor said. “Class size is arguably one of the most expensive things that we would do.”
Taylor said he’d like to spend “a good portion” of next year conducting a study on staffing standards to understand “how to better attack” the issue.
Central office reorganization and ‘budget vegetables’
Taylor said the proposal includes what he called “budget vegetables,” or foundational work that needed to be done. This includes a roughly $7 million reduction in the central office budget, which includes cutting 81 positions and reducing spending. Taylor said it wasn’t an easy move, but necessary to avoid cuts in classroom spending.
“I want to keep reductions as far away from the classroom as humanly possible,” Taylor said. “Candidly, our classrooms are stretched pretty thin as they are. Our schools are not staffed the way they need to be.”
Taylor said in the last five years, while enrollment has decreased by 2%, the MCPS central office staff has grown by 24%, an increase he said he couldn’t justify.
In the interview with MoCo360 before his presentation, Taylor noted there are a number of deficits and financial issues the district needs to address – including an underfunded employee benefits plan and a backlog of building maintenance. For example, the cost to eliminate the backlog for HVAC issues is $385.5 million, according to Taylor’s budget presentation.
“We have not kept up with building maintenance — and this had been an area that hasn’t received the funding it’s needed over the last 20 years,” Taylor said.
His recommended budget includes $40 million to address the underfunded benefits employee plan and $7 million to begin reducing the maintenance issues.
Another “budget vegetable,” Taylor said, is MCPS’s use of savings from staff turnover to cover other budget holes. In June, MCPS said it would use this strategy to avoid educator layoffs as part of closing this fiscal year’s $30.5 million budget gap.
“It’s a good Band-Aid strategy. It’s not a good long-term strategy,” Taylor said. “We kind of have to take off some of those Band-Aids and restore that funding.”
Taylor’s budget includes a planned total of $75 million over the next three years, including $10 million in fiscal year 2026, to restore funding for expenses related to salary lapse and turnover.
‘Equity add-on’, student support and virtual learning
Taylor’s budget includes a new formula for determining material resources for schools based on specific student populations such as those who qualify for Free and Reduced Meals (FARMS), and those identified as special education and EML students. The new formula adds almost $5.75 million to Taylor’s budget.
Taylor said he wasn’t proud that MCPS hasn’t significantly changed the funding for school materials, including items such paper or science equipment, in the last 20 years.
“We think we should maintain that, adjust for inflation … then also do an equity add-on and take into consideration the fact that school characteristics are different,” Taylor said. “We want to make sure that [FARMS, special education and EML students] have access to a great education.”
He also noted the “mothership,” referring to the MCPS central office, needed to do a better job of supporting schools. Taylor is proposing creating “cross-functional” teams assigned to school clusters.
Taylor said these teams may include subject matter experts in math, literacy, special education and human resources who gather with a supervisor to target school improvement in a specific cluster.
The budget proposal also includes almost $2.1 million to enhance virtual learning. The Montgomery Virtual Academy, the district’s online schooling program, was cut from the fiscal year 2025 budget, despite outcry from families in the program. Taylor said he saw value in using virtual learning to provide access to classes across the district if there’s not enough interest to offer a course in a specific school.
