The County Council announced yesterday that they will underfund MCPS’s budget request by $53 million. This news, combined with Governor Larry Hogan’s $17 million cuts announced the same day, forces MCPS to cut per-pupil spending to its lowest level in a decade.
In a preliminary vote May 15, eight out of nine county council members voted for the cuts. The final vote will take place May 21. MCPS requested a 4 percent increase in the Fiscal Year 2016 budget from last year, to meet the increased number of students entering MCPS, but the $53 million represents only 1.4 percent.
“While we are disappointed that our budget was not fully funded, we understand that the County Council had to make some difficult decisions during a time of lagging tax revenues,” Board of Education president Patricia O’Neill said in a statement. “This made state funding even more important.”
MCPS received only half of their expected $34 million from the state.
“The Governor’s decision will now require us to make even deeper cuts that could impact our ability to serve every child to the highest level possible,” O’Neill said.
The total of $70 million in cuts will require MCPS to reduce staffing, thereby increasing class sizes. The preemptive staff cuts Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers announced in March, which remove 370 school-based position across the county, are confirmed by these cuts.
Whitman will lose a special education teacher and part of an ESOL teacher, as well as regular staffing, principal Alan Goodwin said.
“Special ed will be more work for the special ed teachers who are still here,” Goodwin said. “And in ESOL, for our students that sometimes need a lot of extra help, it will be harder to give them that.”
Class sizes will rise to averages of 30 in English classes and 34 in all other classes, Goodwin said. The county’s per-pupil spending has been reduced to 2006 levels, with state per-pupil spending cut for the first time in over ten years, said Doug Prouty, Montgomery County Education Association president, in an email.
Despite the losses from the cuts, next school year will still be able to run normally with thanks to the strong community.
“Whitman has a good student body, supportive parents and great teachers, so we will still be able to deliver the curriculum and march through next year” Goodwin said. “But it’s too bad the adults outside this community up in the governor’s office, as well as our own county council, can’t find some additional funding.”
