Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adam Pagnucco with the e-mails and links: https://montgomeryperspective.com/2026/05/12/taylor-to-council-please-dont-do-this/

Taylor went after the most vulnerable student cohorts with his cuts - special education and immigrant students who are learning English. Middle schools are taking a hit too.

Wouldn't it be great if Taylor took a symbolic hit on his own salary, say, $60K, to save some lower-paid position?

These are the students who already receive outsized expenditures, so that is where you can find money.

Anonymous wrote:Losing both the Career and College Navigators and the English composition assistant is going to make things harder for seniors going through the college application process. The ECA who runs my kid's school's writing center was so helpful to my daughter, reading multiple drafts of her college essays and giving feedback, and the CCN kept things organized for the whole application process. The other cuts are also bad, but these two caught my eye in particular after going through the college process this year.

Thanks, PP. I work as an ECA in the county and I think I read more than 120 college essays - most multiple times! - this year alone. Please use this example from your child’s school when you contact the county council encouraging them to fully fund the MCPS budget.

Most families can’t afford pricey college consultants, and our students who are new to the American education system don’t even know how important the college essay is! I see this all the time in my job - bright students whose families aren’t working the system getting shut out of colleges. I consider myself their advocate and work with them on their application essays and finding scholarship opportunities.

MCPS families may not know what some of these support positions do - Pupil Personnel Workers? Comp assistants? These might seem like positions whose absence wouldn’t be felt, but they would. Thanks again, PP, for seeing us! And hopefully for standing up for us by calling your council member!

TT needs to get rid his of bloated CO and their obnoxious salaries. Media assistants and ECA barely make anything and they actually work with kids. Why would he pick on the small guys who actually help schools function day-to-day? I really hope he rethinks this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are there budget cuts? I moved here 5 years ago. My taxes keep going up and all I hear is the public schools is why. I don't even send my kids to the publics because it seems like a chromebook hellscape staffed by people so insistent that preschoolers read trans books against parental consent that they went to the supreme court. Now there are budget cuts? Am I going to be told my taxes are going up again as a result??

In answer to your question, taxes keep going up because MCPS and County Government compensation costs are rising much faster than inflation and taking up more and more of the budget every year.

So we keep giving them raises?

Teachers deserve the pay raises. 1% increase in COLA on a $80K and a $250K is a different story. The problem is there is no KPI to keep central officers accountable.

Agreed, and many CO staff make a lot of money. Let their salaries stay stagnant. The same can be said of some county employees as well - a lot of big salaries there.

If MCPS ends up having to layoff 800+ staff, do the remaining staff still get raises and steps? Or will MCPS need to do layoffs and still not give raises and steps? Is this an and/or situation or an and/and situation?

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Anonymous wrote:It's pretty much public: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OA8HANnsPlM7-xyvfma4H_0nRLQRYaKo/view

Thanks so much for sharing. And it will probably be worse than this, because this list only goes up to $90M in cuts but it looks like Council is planning on cutting $108M.

$180M

It could theoretically be up to $180M, but Council staff has recommended cutting "only" $108M so that is probably the ceiling. This document covers how MCPS would absorb $90M in cuts (laying off 850 staff plus cutting everyone's COLAs) but they would need to do more to cover an $108M cut.

It's not a cut. MCPS will get an increased budget next year despite decreasing enrollment.

Ah, you're one of those pedants who pretends that inflation doesn't exist, I take it? Yes, technically it is not a cut in straight dollars. But practically speaking, it is a very large cut.

LOL. No cut to the party budget or the personal credit cards! No cut to the embezzler diesel school bus company! They are getting a massive increase!

$180M is nothing in a $3.74B budget.

Oh shut up. It's idiots like you that lead to hundreds of layoffs and our school system being underfunded. This is absolutely a panic-worthy situation. Even if there was enough in waste to cut to plug this hole (there's not), Central Office wouldn't do anyway and the Board of Ed wouldn't make them, so either way there's going to be tons of cuts unless County Council changes course.

Sorry, not a BOE member.

How does pointing out massive waste lead to layoffs? Please explain.

It wasn't panic-worthy when the Maryland State Board of Education declared the $168,000,000 EV bus contract to have been illegally awarded and the CESO AUDIT paid for by the BOE said the MCPS Transportation Department was near collapse financially? But now suddenly panic!!!!!!!!

How is it you say CO and the BOE won't cut any waste and so now the cuts come from only the Council? How does MCPS Central Office and BOE get a pass on your crisis?

Pointing out waste doesn't lead to layoffs. But misleading people by giving them the impression that there is enough waste at Central Office that MCPS can avoid layoffs of hundreds of school staff by just cutting the waste-- and therefore convincing people that they do not need to advocate with County Council to adequately fund MCPS, which is the political pressure that is desperately needed right now if we want to avoid laying off hundreds of school staff-- *does* lead to layoffs.

(Central Office and BOE don't get a pass from me-- they are absolutely failing here. But they are not here listening to me. You are.)

You just gave them a pass. There is enough waste in central office to avoid layoffs. Do some math. 10% of $3.74 billion is a whole lot of cash to look at that doesn’t impact jobs.

Try $168M is what to $170M? One illegal contract equals all the extra money Taylor wants this year.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty much public: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OA8HANnsPlM7-xyvfma4H_0nRLQRYaKo/view

Thanks so much for sharing. And it will probably be worse than this, because this list only goes up to $90M in cuts but it looks like Council is planning on cutting $108M.

$180M

It could theoretically be up to $180M, but Council staff has recommended cutting "only" $108M so that is probably the ceiling. This document covers how MCPS would absorb $90M in cuts (laying off 850 staff plus cutting everyone's COLAs) but they would need to do more to cover an $108M cut.

It's not a cut. MCPS will get an increased budget next year despite decreasing enrollment.

Ah, you're one of those pedants who pretends that inflation doesn't exist, I take it? Yes, technically it is not a cut in straight dollars. But practically speaking, it is a very large cut.

LOL. No cut to the party budget or the personal credit cards! No cut to the embezzler diesel school bus company! They are getting a massive increase!

$180M is nothing in a $3.74B budget.

Oh shut up. It's idiots like you that lead to hundreds of layoffs and our school system being underfunded. This is absolutely a panic-worthy situation. Even if there was enough in waste to cut to plug this hole (there's not), Central Office wouldn't do anyway and the Board of Ed wouldn't make them, so either way there's going to be tons of cuts unless County Council changes course.

Sorry, not a BOE member.

How does pointing out massive waste lead to layoffs? Please explain.

It wasn't panic-worthy when the Maryland State Board of Education declared the $168,000,000 EV bus contract to have been illegally awarded and the CESO AUDIT paid for by the BOE said the MCPS Transportation Department was near collapse financially? But now suddenly panic!!!!!!!!

How is it you say CO and the BOE won't cut any waste and so now the cuts come from only the Council? How does MCPS Central Office and BOE get a pass on your crisis?

Pointing out waste doesn't lead to layoffs. But misleading people by giving them the impression that there is enough waste at Central Office that MCPS can avoid layoffs of hundreds of school staff by just cutting the waste-- and therefore convincing people that they do not need to advocate with County Council to adequately fund MCPS, which is the political pressure that is desperately needed right now if we want to avoid laying off hundreds of school staff-- *does* lead to layoffs.

(Central Office and BOE don't get a pass from me-- they are absolutely failing here. But they are not here listening to me. You are.)

Of course there is. They cannot afford the regional model, so cut that too

Absolutely, I hear Taylor and board members opine that regional programs will attract a small number of students, that I have to ask why we spent over a year on this misguided initiative. Just cut it - we can't afford increased costs for mediocre efforts as these new programs are likely to be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty much public: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OA8HANnsPlM7-xyvfma4H_0nRLQRYaKo/view

Thanks so much for sharing. And it will probably be worse than this, because this list only goes up to $90M in cuts but it looks like Council is planning on cutting $108M.

That's a big cut to special education resource teachers (30.5 FTE), especially when it doesn't seem like MCPS has enough of those staff members...

They are doing it to piss people off so they can get the extra money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are there budget cuts? I moved here 5 years ago. My taxes keep going up and all I hear is the public schools is why. I don't even send my kids to the publics because it seems like a chromebook hellscape staffed by people so insistent that preschoolers read trans books against parental consent that they went to the supreme court. Now there are budget cuts? Am I going to be told my taxes are going up again as a result??

In answer to your question, taxes keep going up because MCPS and County Government compensation costs are rising much faster than inflation and taking up more and more of the budget every year.

So we keep giving them raises?

Teachers deserve the pay raises. 1% increase in COLA on a $80K and a $250K is a different story. The problem is there is no KPI to keep central officers accountable.

Yes, they do but the problem is if many of us have a tax increase and aren't getting raises, its harder for us to afford it. Especially if they are doing a flat fee as why should those of us in $500K homes pay as much as someone in a home 2-6 times as much?

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty much public: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OA8HANnsPlM7-xyvfma4H_0nRLQRYaKo/view

Thanks so much for sharing. And it will probably be worse than this, because this list only goes up to $90M in cuts but it looks like Council is planning on cutting $108M.

$180M

It could theoretically be up to $180M, but Council staff has recommended cutting "only" $108M so that is probably the ceiling. This document covers how MCPS would absorb $90M in cuts (laying off 850 staff plus cutting everyone's COLAs) but they would need to do more to cover an $108M cut.

It's not a cut. MCPS will get an increased budget next year despite decreasing enrollment.

Ah, you're one of those pedants who pretends that inflation doesn't exist, I take it? Yes, technically it is not a cut in straight dollars. But practically speaking, it is a very large cut.

LOL. No cut to the party budget or the personal credit cards! No cut to the embezzler diesel school bus company! They are getting a massive increase!

$180M is nothing in a $3.74B budget.

Oh shut up. It's idiots like you that lead to hundreds of layoffs and our school system being underfunded. This is absolutely a panic-worthy situation. Even if there was enough in waste to cut to plug this hole (there's not), Central Office wouldn't do anyway and the Board of Ed wouldn't make them, so either way there's going to be tons of cuts unless County Council changes course.

Sorry, not a BOE member.

How does pointing out massive waste lead to layoffs? Please explain.

It wasn't panic-worthy when the Maryland State Board of Education declared the $168,000,000 EV bus contract to have been illegally awarded and the CESO AUDIT paid for by the BOE said the MCPS Transportation Department was near collapse financially? But now suddenly panic!!!!!!!!

How is it you say CO and the BOE won't cut any waste and so now the cuts come from only the Council? How does MCPS Central Office and BOE get a pass on your crisis?

Pointing out waste doesn't lead to layoffs. But misleading people by giving them the impression that there is enough waste at Central Office that MCPS can avoid layoffs of hundreds of school staff by just cutting the waste-- and therefore convincing people that they do not need to advocate with County Council to adequately fund MCPS, which is the political pressure that is desperately needed right now if we want to avoid laying off hundreds of school staff-- *does* lead to layoffs.

(Central Office and BOE don't get a pass from me-- they are absolutely failing here. But they are not here listening to me. You are.)

Of course there is. They cannot afford the regional model, so cut that too

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are there budget cuts? I moved here 5 years ago. My taxes keep going up and all I hear is the public schools is why. I don't even send my kids to the publics because it seems like a chromebook hellscape staffed by people so insistent that preschoolers read trans books against parental consent that they went to the supreme court. Now there are budget cuts? Am I going to be told my taxes are going up again as a result??

In answer to your question, taxes keep going up because MCPS and County Government compensation costs are rising much faster than inflation and taking up more and more of the budget every year.

So we keep giving them raises?

I am the PP you are responding to. I am just stating a fact. When compensation costs grow so fast while the economy doesn't grow, it becomes harder and harder to maintain services. It's a legitimately tough situation. Of course we would all love to pay staff more. But in this environment it requires constant tax increases which is problematic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are there budget cuts? I moved here 5 years ago. My taxes keep going up and all I hear is the public schools is why. I don't even send my kids to the publics because it seems like a chromebook hellscape staffed by people so insistent that preschoolers read trans books against parental consent that they went to the supreme court. Now there are budget cuts? Am I going to be told my taxes are going up again as a result??

In answer to your question, taxes keep going up because MCPS and County Government compensation costs are rising much faster than inflation and taking up more and more of the budget every year.

So we keep giving them raises?

Teachers deserve the pay raises. 1% increase in COLA on a $80K and a $250K is a different story. The problem is there is no KPI to keep central officers accountable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are there budget cuts? I moved here 5 years ago. My taxes keep going up and all I hear is the public schools is why. I don't even send my kids to the publics because it seems like a chromebook hellscape staffed by people so insistent that preschoolers read trans books against parental consent that they went to the supreme court. Now there are budget cuts? Am I going to be told my taxes are going up again as a result??

In answer to your question, taxes keep going up because MCPS and County Government compensation costs are rising much faster than inflation and taking up more and more of the budget every year.

So we keep giving them raises?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty much public: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OA8HANnsPlM7-xyvfma4H_0nRLQRYaKo/view

Thanks so much for sharing. And it will probably be worse than this, because this list only goes up to $90M in cuts but it looks like Council is planning on cutting $108M.

$180M

It could theoretically be up to $180M, but Council staff has recommended cutting "only" $108M so that is probably the ceiling. This document covers how MCPS would absorb $90M in cuts (laying off 850 staff plus cutting everyone's COLAs) but they would need to do more to cover an $108M cut.

It's not a cut. MCPS will get an increased budget next year despite decreasing enrollment.

Ah, you're one of those pedants who pretends that inflation doesn't exist, I take it? Yes, technically it is not a cut in straight dollars. But practically speaking, it is a very large cut.

LOL. No cut to the party budget or the personal credit cards! No cut to the embezzler diesel school bus company! They are getting a massive increase!

$180M is nothing in a $3.74B budget.

Oh shut up. It's idiots like you that lead to hundreds of layoffs and our school system being underfunded. This is absolutely a panic-worthy situation. Even if there was enough in waste to cut to plug this hole (there's not), Central Office wouldn't do anyway and the Board of Ed wouldn't make them, so either way there's going to be tons of cuts unless County Council changes course.

Sorry, not a BOE member.

How does pointing out massive waste lead to layoffs? Please explain.

It wasn't panic-worthy when the Maryland State Board of Education declared the $168,000,000 EV bus contract to have been illegally awarded and the CESO AUDIT paid for by the BOE said the MCPS Transportation Department was near collapse financially? But now suddenly panic!!!!!!!!

How is it you say CO and the BOE won't cut any waste and so now the cuts come from only the Council? How does MCPS Central Office and BOE get a pass on your crisis?

Pointing out waste doesn't lead to layoffs. But misleading people by giving them the impression that there is enough waste at Central Office that MCPS can avoid layoffs of hundreds of school staff by just cutting the waste-- and therefore convincing people that they do not need to advocate with County Council to adequately fund MCPS, which is the political pressure that is desperately needed right now if we want to avoid laying off hundreds of school staff-- *does* lead to layoffs.

(Central Office and BOE don't get a pass from me-- they are absolutely failing here. But they are not here listening to me. You are.)

Welcome MCPS joins the layoff group. UMD going to layoff 150 positions, Bowie state university is going to layoff 80 jobs. Guess who will join next? It is really a vulnerable time.