The Montgomery County school board is scheduled to take its final vote Tuesday on a $3.65 billion fiscal year 2026 operating budget for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), potentially approving a spending plan that funds all but $8.6 million of the board’s initial request to the county.
On May 22, the Montgomery County Council approved a $7.6 billion county spending plan for fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1. The $3.65 billion designated for MCPS in the county budget represents about 99.8% of what the school board requested and also is the largest spending plan ever approved for the district.
MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor said at a May 22 school board meeting that the work on the MCPS budget – in public and behind the scenes – took nearly a year.
“This is a process that consumes an enormous amount of our energy and time,” Taylor said. “But the output, of course, translates into what happens in the classroom and how we’re able to serve our students.”
To close the $8.6 million gap, Taylor is recommending several reductions, including cutting $3.3 million from a proposal to increase equity among schools regarding materials and $2.8 million for 30 new special education positions. Aside from clarifying questions, the board had limited discussions on the changes at its May 22 school board meeting, signaling that it’s likely the budget will pass unanimously. The board vote is the final step in the school system’s budget process.
Taylor’s full list of recommended cuts includes:
- A $3.3 million reduction to the $5.8 million requested for an equity add-on formula, which would give additional funding for materials to schools with large populations of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Meals (FARMS), a measure of poverty; special education students; and Emergent Multilingual Learners;
- Cutting funding for hiring new special education teachers by $2.8 million, reducing the number of requested new positions from 186 to 156;
- Reducing by $2.5 million the $9 million requested for maintenance;
- A roughly $420,000 reduction in funding for additional security assistants, reducing the number of new positions from 52 to 45;
- Cutting $800,000 in proposed licensing of a middle school STEM curriculum;
- Cutting $500,000 from $3.7 million requested for Chromebook repairs; and
- Cutting $250,000 for a proposal to study academic programs.
Taylor’s recommendations were largely focused on closing the $8.6 million budget gap. However, the adjustments also include adding $1.3 million to restore several Emergent Multilingual Learner positions in the district’s central office that had been cut during an administrative reorganization, which Taylor said would help align the staff to the district’s objectives. The recommendations also include adding $600,000 to assess special education and talent management.
The fiscal year 2026 MCPS budget represents a nearly 9% increase over the current $3.32 billion operating budget. MCPS expects to receive about $210 million more from the county and $63.7 million in state funding above what it received during fiscal year 2025, according to school board documents.
The proposed increase in MCPS spending from fiscal year 2025 comes in the wake of a difficult budget season in 2024 in which the county school board had to make significant spending cuts. The cuts were needed to close a spending gap after the council approved a fiscal year 2025 MCPS operating budget that was $30.5 million less in spending than the school board requested.
Bethesda Today reporter Ginny Bixby contributed to this report
