Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor told the County Council on Tuesday that three construction projects — Crown High School in Gaithersburg, Woodward High in Rockville and a new building for Silver Spring’s Northwood High — are on track to be completed on time, with the schools opening in August 2027 as originally projected.
“These projects are really trains that are on different tracks that are all going to arrive at the station at roughly the same time,” Taylor said. He noted that a “central feature” of the county’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP) for fiscal years 2025-2030 is “finishing those projects in earnest.”
Taylor and other MCPS officials answered questions from councilmembers during Tuesday’s work session on potential amendments to capital projects that are funded through the fiscal year 2025-2030 CIP. Fiscal year 2025 ends June 30.
While the CIP was approved last year by the council, councilmembers are able to revise it annually through amendments, typically proposed by the county executive. According to a council staff report, MCPS’s total CIP funding request remains at $1.85 billion. The six-year level of funding is the same as in the originally approved CIP, but the proposed amendments could change how that money is spent across each year.
The amendments outline MCPS proposed funding changes including:
- Adding $20,000 for increased construction costs for Crown High, including build-out of the stadium and science labs;
- Adding $5,000 for amenities for the new Northwood High building;
- Adding $28,000 for Woodward High School reopening projects, including the build-out of an auditorium;
- Adding $4,500 for increased HVAC expenditures;
- Reducing by $36,000 spending allocated for early childhood center projects in order to reallocate funding to other projects; and
- Reducing spending by $5,000 for sustainability projects in order to reallocate funding to other projects.
The council’s Education and Culture Committee is recommending the full council vote to approve the amendments. The CIP reconciliation process will take place in May alongside council decisions concerning County Executive Marc Elrich’s (D) recommended $7.6 billion county operating budget for fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1.
“All of us on the Board of Education, our commitment, our wish, our goal … is to have functional school buildings across the district for all our students,” school board President Julie Yang told the council.
Yang said that when reviewing the CIP for possible amendment proposals, the school board tries to prioritize completion of projects that are already underway, and balance that with rising construction costs.
“We try to keep whatever we have in the CIP program to deliver it within scope and on time,” Yang said. “So that requires some extra investment.”
One of the more notable amendments is the increase in funding for Woodward. In March 2024, the school board controversially delayed the construction of the auditorium at the newly rebuilt Rockville school because of budget shortfalls and other issues. Though the school doesn’t officially open until 2027, Northwood High School has moved into the building while its facility is being rebuilt in Silver Spring. If approved, the amendment would fund the construction of the new Woodward auditorium.
“It is complex, what happened and where we’re going [with Woodward],” council President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4) said of the Woodward funding changes.
She thanked Taylor for raising the issue through the CIP amendment. Stewart, whose district includes the neighborhood where the Woodward building is located, was vocal last year about her frustration with the delay in the auditorium build-out.
Councilmember Evan Glass (D-At-large) asked the MCPS officials about the status of potential improvements at Col. Zaduk Magruder High School in Derwood. Ongoing infrastructure issues at the school were highlighted after part of the auditorium ceiling crumbled during a performance of the spring musical Once Upon a Mattress earlier this month, causing the rest of the show’s run to be relocated to Shady Grove Middle School in Gaithersburg.
Taylor said that with the ongoing competition between budgetary priorities over the past several years, “pay-as-you-go” infrastructure maintenance expenses have often “gone by the wayside.”
“Unfortunately, a lot of our buildings lack the TLC that is needed to keep them up and to keep them in the cycle for their regular useful life,” Taylor said. “As a consequence of that, some of our buildings look and feel a little bit older than they really are.”
Taylor said he believes that reprioritization of ongoing maintenance and repairs will prevent schools from falling into the kind of disrepair that requires major renovations. This is part of the reason for some of the proposed funding changes, he said.
Taylor is revamping the school system’s facility index to keep track of some of the district’s ongoing maintenance and infrastructure issues to inform future MCPS requests for CIP amendments. For example, Yang told the council that several school buildings are experiencing significant HVAC issues, hence the requested amendment for increased funding for HVAC improvements.
“Let me be very clear and say that we have a lot of work to do. We have aging infrastructure throughout our school district, and we are acutely aware of the backlog of major system upgrades that we need to tackle,” Taylor said. “The need to increase accessibility throughout the county is a major priority, and we have capacity issues in many spots of the district.”
