County school board examines Taylor’s proposed $3.6B MCPS operating budget

Work session covers non-discretionary funding; public hearing Thursday

January 15, 2025 11:16 a.m. | Updated: January 27, 2025 6:12 p.m.

The Montgomery County school board delved Tuesday into Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s proposed $3.6 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2026, focusing its first work session on state-mandated spending and other required costs.  

“This budget is about focusing our energies and efforts into supporting schools … being very focused on our fundamentals and the things that we know work, exhibiting good fiscal stewardship and then sharing it out in a very transparent way,” Taylor told the board at its meeting in Rockville.  

Taylor presented a more detailed version of his plans for non-discretionary spending than he had previously, explaining funding included for implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s 2021 education reform bill, as well as for employee compensation and school support.  

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While Tuesday’s work session covered non-discretionary items, Taylor and the board are planning to hold two more work sessions, one focused on discretionary spending and another on changes to the fiscal year 2025 base budget. Public hearings on the budget proposal are scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday and Jan. 27. 

According to a budget spreadsheet shared by the district, Taylor’s budget is requesting $2.4 billion from the county, which is $291 million above maintenance of effort. State law requires the county to provide the district at least the same amount in local dollars from one year to the next. The maintenance of effort amount for fiscal year 2025 is $2.1 billion.

While Taylor has introduced his proposed budget, he noted the district is waiting to find out how much funding it will receive from the county, state and federal governments. 

“There is actually a lot of question marks that lay ahead,” Taylor told the board. “We have a number of things to keep in mind as we are trying to put forward a proposal that both meets our needs and also lives within our means at the same time.”  

Blueprint funds  

The proposed 2026 fiscal year budget allocates $10.9 million for meeting the Blueprint’s requirements to pay student fees for dual enrollment programs and AP/IB exams, expanding pre-kindergarten and adding salary supplements for high-quality teachers. 

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According to the proposal, the pre-k expansion would cost $7.4 million and include adding 13 full-day general education classes, 13 full-day special education classes and 10 special education collaborative model classes, plus 91 full-time equivalent positions. Another $2.1 million would go toward covering fees for students who take college courses through dual enrollment and who take AP and IB exams. About $1.4 million is allocated for salary supplements for teachers who receive National Board Certification

Several board members as well as Janine Bacquie, MCPS director of the Division of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, expressed disappointment with unfunded state mandates and the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board’s (AIB) implementation of the reform plan. For example, Bacquie said the state is funding only about 30% of the required pre-kindergarten expansion. 

“We are being asked to cut some fundamental things of teaching and learning in our budget to pay for new things that, frankly, have not been prioritized,” board member Karla Silvestre said. “It is ‘Do this, do that, do this.’ They’re all great educational reform efforts, but they have not been prioritized.”  

Bacquie said MCPS and other school districts are frustrated by the AIB’s lack of guidance and flexibility concerning the reforms. Guidance often isn’t given in a timely manner and even when guidance is provided, it often results in more questions, Bacquie said.  

Additionally, the AIB often tells school districts that the Blueprint reforms are state mandates that must be implemented, regardless of whether districts can pay for them, Bacquie said.  

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“Even when the school systems propose some alternatives … if it’s unfunded [the AIB is] saying ‘You have to look at your budget and cut something else because you have to do these mandates,’ ” Bacquie said. “There’s the urgency of now for our students, but there has to be some flexibility in how we’re able to carry out these mandates.”  

The district may also receive less Blueprint money than expected from the state for fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1. Gov. Wes Moore (D) and the AIB have discussed delaying funding for a Blueprint step that would create more planning time for teachers. Bacquie said this could mean $25 million less for the district, impacting plans the district has been working toward implementing.  

Compensation, school-based staffing and support 

The cost of employee compensation – a projected $186.2 million pending the ratification of contracts with several educator unions – is the district’s biggest projected expense, according to Taylor’s Tuesday presentation.  

The projected cost reflects a roughly 5% annual salary increase depending on the staff member’s position and years with the district – including a 3.25% increase for inflation and “step increases,” which are salary increases that employees receive as they enter a higher level of employment.  Plus, the district is spending about $6.2 million to reclassify paraeducators and athletic directors. 

The budget also allocates $46.7 million to add roughly 688 special education full-time equivalent positions. According to Taylor’s presentation, of the 688, 188 would be new teachers and 500 would be paraeducators. Of the 500 paraeducator positions, 366 are existing part-time jobs that would be converted to full time and 134 of the positions would be new hires.  

Newly elected board member Natalie Zimmerman noted that there’s a teacher shortage, especially in special education, and asked Taylor if he believed the district would be able to fill all of the proposed positions.  

Taylor said that was the aim and the district had high hopes because many educators come to MCPS because it is “an attractive place to work.”  

“I don’t want us to ever be in the position to where … we’re not meeting a need, but we can’t hire [someone] because we don’t have the position allocation available,” Taylor said.  

The proposed budget also includes 47 new teaching positions for Emergent Multilingual Learners and roughly 34 positions for general education tied to projected growth in middle school and high school. Elementary school enrollment is expected to decrease.  

Taylor said that although student enrollment has been flat or declined in some areas, the district is adding teacher positions because the needs of the student population have changed. The additional staff won’t impact class size, Taylor said.  

Board members Brenda Wolff and Rita Montoya expressed concerns that there wasn’t “intentional activity” included in the budget to address opportunity gaps for Black and Latino students.  

Taylor said that while there aren’t specific line items delineated for Black and Latino students, he was hoping to show that there’s “intentional investment” in improving learning environments and that there weren’t issues such as shortages of school materials.  

Other non-discretionary items 

Taylor also discussed funding for financial corrections, including $40 million to “play catch up” for health insurance after the district didn’t accurately project medical costs over the last several years and $9 million for school maintenance. Of that $9 million, $2 million will go toward creating “facility task force teams,” which will include maintenance experts from a variety of fields to address a backlog of needed maintenance. 

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