Reply to Dec 18th: FY 2026 Recommended Operating Budget

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Does anyone know how/why we spend more for elementary students than secondary?    Because secondary schools have more staff, more class, athletics, and more specialized equipment needs. What am I missing?

Is it just because there are more elementary school buildings?[/quote]

The class sizes are significantly lower by law in elementary school so you need more teachers.  https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/news/bulletin/2024-06/june-12-2024/understanding-the-class-size-guidelines-increase/

Kindergarten has a class cap of 25 and class size increases through elementary but never over 29.  In secondary school English is 30 and other classes are 33.

But more pertinent,  If you think that perhaps 4 elementary schools feed 1 high school. These 4 elementary schools must each have janitorial, groundskeepers, security, front office, IT support, cafeteria, administrative and guidance. And each elementary school  must  have electric, phones, plumbing, water, repairs, hvac, etc….  When you get to HS you condense into just maintaining one building. Basically in high school it is one larger property to maintain and staff while in elementary school it is many more smaller properties to maintain and staff.  It is cheaper to have the one larger than 4 smaller.  If we wanted to cut costs long run we could build up one elementary school to the size of the high school and sell off the other properties.  I am not supporting this since I like the smaller schools for the younger kids but fiscally 1 large school is cheaper to maintain and staff than 4 small schools. [/quote]

That’s what I suspected, thanks for confirming.  Those secondary class guidelines are laughable.  Maybe they work for homerooms, but many actual classes definitely have more than 30.  [/quote]

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