Dec 18th: FY 2026 Recommended Operating Budget

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What else since there's a massive shortfall?

We will find out once he releases the budget. I have heard central office and no student facing secondary school positions during his talk to the civic association. There will need to be more. I assume he plans to keep the increased class sizes started last year. I also head him mention issue in county with underutilized elementary schools projected to become more underutilized. I know the boundary study leaves out elementary school assignments but would not be shocked if he signaled willingness to close the most underutilized schools that are near schools that could take the displaced students. That would save large money. He could also eliminate some speciality academic programs that use MCPS busses. That would save money. He could lean into using Montgomery college more for upper level classes — as some high schools already do for classes above AP calculus and AP physics — and save money on teacher salaries/pensions by not having MCPS staff teach those classes while saying this makes it more equitable on opens access to higher level classes to all. He is going to have to cut some things that will anger parents.

Too many kids take Ap calculus. Problem with MC is transportation and times of classes available. They should make all the hs schedules the same and offer classes through MCPS virtual that they don’t offer through the homeschools. They pay Mc fo those classes so it’s not a cost savings.

I think MCPS keeps AP calc but not the classes above that. Most schools can fill a full AP Calc classroom but not a linear equations class. Make sense to keep AP level classes at MCPS, plus offering those classes and having kids score well looks good for MCPS. But for classes above AP, using MC is a cost savings since they are not responsible for those testers salaries, health are pensions. It costs less to pay MC than it does to pay MCPS teachers. The teacher cost is salary plus benefits package that includes pension.

There is no real cost savings if you look at the total costs, plus its a hardship on parents who cannot provide cars to their kids and its a hardship for kids who are in after school activities as many classes are either offered during MCPS hours, which kids are in class or after school/evenings. Our not so great high school has multiple AP Cal AB and BC classes. I think there would be a demand if offered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Consulting teachers - that whole department should go. Allow staff development teachers back to full time and allow them to take the caseload of teachers who qualify for consulting teachers at their school.

Between that and the equity office that has to be at least 40 teachers plus any+ administrative staff.

Wowza. Look at that. I'm sure an additional 40 teachers could definitely be put to good use in MCPS!

Wow!! This sounds like a crazy waste of resources! Staff in buildings are already doing this. What is the point of this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about restorative justice coaches. They can go back to the classroom too. Also, the SSL office. We can also cut the NEC and the DCC offices. Why do we have the consortiums anyway? Kids mostly choose schools off of where their friends are going and who has the best sports teams.

The consortiums offer choice programs to alleviate the need to do busing for racial integration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about restorative justice coaches. They can go back to the classroom too. Also, the SSL office. We can also cut the NEC and the DCC offices. Why do we have the consortiums anyway? Kids mostly choose schools off of where their friends are going and who has the best sports teams.

The consortiums offer choice programs to alleviate the need to do busing for racial integration.

The consortiums have not achieved racial integration, and have greatly increased the number of bus routes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about restorative justice coaches. They can go back to the classroom too. Also, the SSL office. We can also cut the NEC and the DCC offices. Why do we have the consortiums anyway? Kids mostly choose schools off of where their friends are going and who has the best sports teams.

The consortiums offer choice programs to alleviate the need to do busing for racial integration.

We should examine the racial integration of these 8 schools. They are all majority minority if I’m not mistaken. How many students at these schools are not in their home school and are enrolled in one of the choice programs? I bet not many.

Sending multiple buses to the same bus stop every day doesn’t seem efficient when money is tight.

[Anonymous]

I think financially the consortium program no longer makes sense. All of these schools are in the Woodward boundary study so that could be the device to make each school diverse and end choice/bussing. The MCPS portion of the study is also looking to make programs more equitable across the county and certainly having school choice only in that one area is not equitable. MCPS after the boundary study could save lots of money by eliminating that consortium. That gets rid of lots of bussing plus all staff that oversaw the logistics of that program. The special programs housed at each school could be either closed or distributed differently to make county access to those programs more equitable. I do not see a future where MCPS is flush with money again so focusing schools back on the basics of teaching academics and offering less choice/bussing could free up lots of money that could then be used for smaller class sizes for the entire county, more para educators and more resources for English learners and special education - two areas that are underfunded and struggling. Really all kids in the county should have access at their local schools to desirable programs and courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think financially the consortium program no longer makes sense. All of these schools are in the Woodward boundary study so that could be the device to make each school diverse and end choice/bussing. The MCPS portion of the study is also looking to make programs more equitable across the county and certainly having school choice only in that one area is not equitable. MCPS after the boundary study could save lots of money by eliminating that consortium. That gets rid of lots of bussing plus all staff that oversaw the logistics of that program. The special programs housed at each school could be either closed or distributed differently to make county access to those programs more equitable. I do not see a future where MCPS is flush with money again so focusing schools back on the basics of teaching academics and offering less choice/bussing could free up lots of money that could then be used for smaller class sizes for the entire county, more para educators and more resources for English learners and special education - two areas that are underfunded and struggling. Really all kids in the county should have access at their local schools to desirable programs and courses.

The DCC schools are included in the boundary study. The NEC schools are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think financially the consortium program no longer makes sense. All of these schools are in the Woodward boundary study so that could be the device to make each school diverse and end choice/bussing. The MCPS portion of the study is also looking to make programs more equitable across the county and certainly having school choice only in that one area is not equitable. MCPS after the boundary study could save lots of money by eliminating that consortium. That gets rid of lots of bussing plus all staff that oversaw the logistics of that program. The special programs housed at each school could be either closed or distributed differently to make county access to those programs more equitable. I do not see a future where MCPS is flush with money again so focusing schools back on the basics of teaching academics and offering less choice/bussing could free up lots of money that could then be used for smaller class sizes for the entire county, more para educators and more resources for English learners and special education - two areas that are underfunded and struggling. Really all kids in the county should have access at their local schools to desirable programs and courses.

The DCC schools are included in the boundary study. The NEC schools are not.

You are right! I forgot about the NEC schools. My guess would be if MCPS uses the boundary study to eliminate choice in the DCC then they could use the concurrent program offering study to eliminate choice in the NEC in some back door manner. I am not a fan of eliminating choice. I just think in a shrinking funding county that bad choices will need to be made to lower class size, something all schools need. I would rather have much smaller classes for all schools than school choice for a few schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think financially the consortium program no longer makes sense. All of these schools are in the Woodward boundary study so that could be the device to make each school diverse and end choice/bussing. The MCPS portion of the study is also looking to make programs more equitable across the county and certainly having school choice only in that one area is not equitable. MCPS after the boundary study could save lots of money by eliminating that consortium. That gets rid of lots of bussing plus all staff that oversaw the logistics of that program. The special programs housed at each school could be either closed or distributed differently to make county access to those programs more equitable. I do not see a future where MCPS is flush with money again so focusing schools back on the basics of teaching academics and offering less choice/bussing could free up lots of money that could then be used for smaller class sizes for the entire county, more para educators and more resources for English learners and special education - two areas that are underfunded and struggling. Really all kids in the county should have access at their local schools to desirable programs and courses.

The DCC schools are included in the boundary study. The NEC schools are not.

You are right! I forgot about the NEC schools. My guess would be if MCPS uses the boundary study to eliminate choice in the DCC then they could use the concurrent program offering study to eliminate choice in the NEC in some back door manner. I am not a fan of eliminating choice. I just think in a shrinking funding county that bad choices will need to be made to lower class size, something all schools need. I would rather have much smaller classes for all schools than school choice for a few schools.

I don’t see the full elimination of choice happening because it’s one of the only ways that advanced learners are being served in the county. What I can see happening is less choices. I heard there is something like 100 programs. And while I’m sure they all offer something that students want, it may not be feasible to have that many. It may be more impactful to turn some of these programs into Summer

Also, there seems to be some choice/signature programs that despite different names and schools seem on their face to be offering the same thing. These programs could likely benefit from some standardization and alignment.

Will see in a few days how much our new Superintendent is willing to shake things up and how he’ll ensure the political winds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about restorative justice coaches. They can go back to the classroom too. Also, the SSL office. We can also cut the NEC and the DCC offices. Why do we have the consortiums anyway? Kids mostly choose schools off of where their friends are going and who has the best sports teams.

The consortiums offer choice programs to alleviate the need to do busing for racial integration.

The consortiums have not achieved racial integration, and have greatly increased the number of bus routes.

But DCC seems a lot more diverse than Western moco.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's being cut??

Central office positions

How when he just added 2 additional chief positions at $250K a pop?

[Anonymous]

Believe it or not, the consortium model is not universally beloved by all families in the DCC.

Especially since the DCC is MUCH larger than the NEC.

What students gain in "choice," actually contributes to a Hunger Games-style process where the most popular schools (Blair, Wheaton, Einstein) get filled up quickly while the less popular and less resourced schools (Northwood, Kennedy) end up at the bottom of the barrel. Kids feel rejected and dejected when they don't get accepted into one of the top three and end up at one of the bottom two.

Furthermore, with the consortium model, you lose any sense of a "neighborhood" school feeling, since kids trek to the school from all over Silver Spring. This weakens the community-school bonds as well.

Chalk this up to another one of those things MCPS does that SOUNDS good in theory, but has serious negative tradeoffs in practice.

While Sherwood parents were partially rooted in racism by not wanting to join the NEC, they weren't wrong that adopting the NEC model would have fundamentally changed the character of their neighborhood school in ways that might not be desirable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think financially the consortium program no longer makes sense. All of these schools are in the Woodward boundary study so that could be the device to make each school diverse and end choice/bussing. The MCPS portion of the study is also looking to make programs more equitable across the county and certainly having school choice only in that one area is not equitable. MCPS after the boundary study could save lots of money by eliminating that consortium. That gets rid of lots of bussing plus all staff that oversaw the logistics of that program. The special programs housed at each school could be either closed or distributed differently to make county access to those programs more equitable. I do not see a future where MCPS is flush with money again so focusing schools back on the basics of teaching academics and offering less choice/bussing could free up lots of money that could then be used for smaller class sizes for the entire county, more para educators and more resources for English learners and special education - two areas that are underfunded and struggling. Really all kids in the county should have access at their local schools to desirable programs and courses.

The DCC schools are included in the boundary study. The NEC schools are not.

You are right! I forgot about the NEC schools. My guess would be if MCPS uses the boundary study to eliminate choice in the DCC then they could use the concurrent program offering study to eliminate choice in the NEC in some back door manner. I am not a fan of eliminating choice. I just think in a shrinking funding county that bad choices will need to be made to lower class size, something all schools need. I would rather have much smaller classes for all schools than school choice for a few schools.

I don’t see the full elimination of choice happening because it’s one of the only ways that advanced learners are being served in the county. What I can see happening is less choices. I heard there is something like 100 programs. And while I’m sure they all offer something that students want, it may not be feasible to have that many. It may be more impactful to turn some of these programs into Summer

Also, there seems to be some choice/signature programs that despite different names and schools seem on their face to be offering the same thing. These programs could likely benefit from some standardization and alignment.

Will see in a few days how much our new Superintendent is willing to shake things up and how he’ll ensure the political winds.

They have already announced they're going to "conduct a districtwide program analysis to evaluate whether academic and specialized programs are equitably distributed across the district." That will occur over the next year+. So perhaps Taylor will eventually include cuts or other changes to these programs in a future budget presentation, once the analysis has happened. But I would not expect to see anything about this on Wednesday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about restorative justice coaches. They can go back to the classroom too. Also, the SSL office. We can also cut the NEC and the DCC offices. Why do we have the consortiums anyway? Kids mostly choose schools off of where their friends are going and who has the best sports teams.

The consortiums offer choice programs to alleviate the need to do busing for racial integration.

We should examine the racial integration of these 8 schools. They are all majority minority if I’m not mistaken. How many students at these schools are not in their home school and are enrolled in one of the choice programs? I bet not many.

Sending multiple buses to the same bus stop every day doesn’t seem efficient when money is tight.

24 out of 25 MCPS high schools are majority minority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's being cut??

Central office positions

How when he just added 2 additional chief positions at $250K a pop?

He said at the BOE meeting he wants to shift services and resources to schools and reduce bureaucratic layers and silos.