Two Montgomery County public schools are slated to lose Title I status for the 2025-2026 school year, while four are expected to gain the designation, as the district embraces a new way to calculate poverty.
Meadow Hall Elementary in Rockville and Benjamin Banneker Middle in Burtonsville are slated to lose Title I status, according to the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) website. Federal funding that comes with Title I status pays for additional educators, summer school and other programs. Letters sent to the school communities by MCPS on Feb. 24 and 28 said they will continue to receive additional staffing and have reduced class sizes funded by the county to ensure a “smooth transition.”
Rockville’s Brookhaven, Silver Spring’s Strathmore, Germantown’s Dr. Sally K. Ride and Gaithersburg’s Judith A. Resnik elementary schools will gain the Title I designation for the upcoming school year. Brookhaven and Strathmore were among the four schools that lost Title I status in the 2024-2025 school year.
According to MCPS, 49 schools — 44 elementary and five middle schools — will be designated Title I for the 2025-2026 school year.
Last year MCPS began to shift how it calculates Title I status, causing concerns among school communities that lost support, including a walk out at Viers Mill Elementary in Silver Spring.
MCPS spokesperson Liliana Lopez didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to an emailed request for comment about potential concerns with the shift in how MCPS calculates Title I status.
How is Title I status decided?
According to federal guidelines, schools can qualify for Title I programs if 40% or more of its students are eligible for free meals. However, even if schools reach the 40% threshold, it doesn’t automatically mean it will be designated a Title I school, due to limited federal funding.
According to the fiscal year 2025 budget, MCPS received $51.5 million in Title I funding from the federal government. MCPS had 47 Title I schools in the 2024-2025 school year, according to the MCPS website.
For the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, MCPS is estimating $47.1 million in Title I funding.
The district ranks schools by the percentage of students who qualify for free meals, according to the MCPS website. To qualify as a Title I school in MCPS for 2025-2026, schools must meet the 40% federal threshold as well as the MCPS threshold of 43.8% for elementary and 42.9% for middle schools, according to the MCPS website.
Title I status can shift annually as student populations fluctuate. However, some schools in the district saw large changes in their poverty percentages for the 2024-2025 school year after the district adjusted how it calculates poverty levels.
Prior to the 2024-2025 school year, whether a school received Title I status was determined by the number of students receiving free and reduced-price meals (FARMS). Changes in status for the 2024-2025 began after MCPS started participating in a federal free meals program. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program provides free breakfast and lunch for all students in schools and districts in low-income areas.
According to a presentation to the Banneker Middle PTA from Nichelle Owens, the MCPS director for early childhood and Title I programs, CEP schools don’t distribute FARMS applications. So, for the 2024-2025 school year, MCPS calculated poverty levels two ways. For CEP schools, the district used direct certification, which identifies students in households that receive benefits such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or Medicaid. For non-CEP schools, the district used FARMS data.
In a Feb. 22, 2024, school board meeting Peggy Pugh, chief academic officer, said the shift in calculations “changed the rankings in schools quite drastically.”
The change made it so four schools – Oak View, Strathmore and Viers Mill elementary schools in Silver Spring and Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville – lost Title I status. Six other schools gained Title I status for the 2024-2025 school year, including Banneker Middle and Meadow Hall Elementary.
For the 2025-2026 school year, Owens said during the PTA presentation that the district was only utilizing direct certification data to be more consistent.
The percentage of children certified for free meals at Banneker Middle and Meadow Hall Elementary slipped to 39.9% for the 2025-2026 school year, meaning the two schools no longer meet the federal Title I guidelines, according to letters sent to Banneker and Meadow Hall families.
Even if the schools met the 40% federal threshold, they would be ineligible for Title I designation due to the MCPS threshold being 43.8% for elementary schools and 42.9% for middle schools.
What will happen at Meadow Hall and Banneker?
According to the letters, “to ensure a smooth transition” Meadow Hall Elementary and Banneker Middle were designated as “focus schools.” According to the MCPS website, focus schools are schools impacted by poverty, but not to the same level as Title I schools. An MCPS spokesperson did not immediately reply to an email Tuesday from Bethesda Today asking how many focus schools are in the district.
According to the letter, the two schools will receive additional staffing and reduced class sizes. The letter also noted that Superintendent Thomas Taylor has proposed an $5.47 million for an “equity add-on” to the school material funding formula in his fiscal year 2026 operating budget.
The budget has yet to be finalized. Taylor’s $3.65 billion budget was tentatively approved by the school board Feb. 4.
The tentatively approved proposal is now with County Executive Marc Elrich (D), who is reviewing it while preparing his proposed fiscal year 2026 county operating budget. Elrich is expected to release the budget, including MCPS spending, in mid-March.
