Reply to How would you cut the budget?

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[quote=Anonymous]The core issue is enrollment driven cost, not just management or efficiency.

When you add it up honestly, the numbers are staggering. Independent demographic estimates indicate roughly 9,000 undocumented students are enrolled in local public schools. At about $19,600 per student, that is roughly $175 million per year in base education spending. Once you include ESOL services, FARMS meals, additional aides, specialists, counseling, and transportation, a realistic total cost is closer to $230 million per year.

The bigger impact comes from undocumented household driven enrollment. Estimates suggest another 11,000 to 22,000 US born students live with at least one undocumented parent. Even assuming only 10,000 of those students are enrolled in FCPS, the base cost alone is about $196 million per year. Adding the same high needs services pushes that total to roughly $250 million to $270 million annually.

Combined, enrollment tied directly or indirectly to undocumented households plausibly costs FCPS on the order of $450 million to $500 million per year. That is a massive structural burden on the school system and taxpayers.

This is why enforcing existing laws where the county legally can matters. FCPS cannot deny enrollment, but the county can reduce the pull factors that keep attracting and retaining high cost households. Reducing these populations reduces enrollment pressure across the entire system.

Fewer students means fewer classrooms, fewer aides, fewer specialists, and less administrative overhead over time. This does not require firing teachers. Staffing reductions happen naturally through attrition as enrollment declines, which is already how FCPS adjusts positions. With a smaller student body, union contract increases become affordable and remaining teachers can be paid more while teaching fewer students with lower overall needs.

The real goal should be a smaller student population with fewer high needs and a higher share of tax producing households. That lowers costs and strengthens revenue at the same time. Anything else leads to the downward spiral we are already seeing. Ballooning budgets, escalating labor costs, more bonds, higher taxes, and a system that becomes even more attractive to additional high needs households.

If leaders refuse to enforce the law where they can and reduce enrollment pressure, FCPS will continue to get more expensive, not better.[/quote]

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