In December 2024, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor unveiled the Fiscal 2026 budget, which suggested dedicating over $40 million toward special education programs. The proposed budget would add nearly 700 special education workers to MCPS schools to address the needs of students with disabilities across the county. The addition aims to fix short-staffing in MCPS special education programs, an issue that has long affected students with special needs across the county.
Before revealing his first budget proposal in December, Taylor said he knew his budget wouldn’t be perfect.
“We’re not asking for a budget that is going to be innovative,” Taylor said during the budget presentation. “This is a budget that fills holes. This is a budget that solves problems.”
However, some special education teachers argue that the imperfect budget barely covers their basic needs. Rosemary Hills Elementary School special education teacher Hazen Noell said she believes that the budget creators don’t truly understand the deficiencies that special education programs in MCPS face.
“Some person sitting up in the office who’s in charge of that number has no idea,” Noell said. “It’s never based on actual student needs.”
Taylor’s budget allocates $46.6 million to employ special education workers, the majority being paraeducators. In a special education program, paraeducators are crucial to maintaining classroom order. Their tasks include assisting students with their day-to-day learning activities, helping them use the bathroom and feeding them meals depending on the needs of the students. Though they are not directly in charge of a student’s learning process, they support the students and help them develop their day-to-day abilities.
According to Noell, self-contained traditional autism programs consist of one teacher, two paraeducators, and anywhere from four to 10 students in every classroom. However, the number of paraeducators and teachers remains the same regardless of the number of students in the class. Noell said it’s typical for her and her paraeducators to handle multiple students simultaneously due to the lack of staffing.
Additionally, MCPS’s hiring process makes filling paraeducator positions especially difficult. Though background checks are instrumental in the hiring process, Noell said MCPS’s slow processing period is ultimately harmful to the teachers, who must wait several weeks before getting a paraeducator into their classroom.
“If you wanted to become an employee of MCPS, you have to go through background checks, which can take up to six weeks,” Noell said. “The joke is, ‘We’ll see you in two months when you make it through your screening process.’”
Despite MCPS running extensive background checks on their hires, paraeducators don’t receive any training. Noell said that MCPS tends to hire less qualified candidates just to have another adult in the classroom, even though there are supposedly many requirements to become an MCPS paraeducator. Once they enter the classroom, it’s the teacher’s responsibility to train the new hires, something they must take on in addition to their daily responsibilities.
SEIU Local 500 Director of Political and Legislative Affairs Christopher Cano argues that MCPS must do more to account for these training deficiencies.
“They need to… budget for paid training for paraeducators,” Cano said. “Every time [a teacher] has to take time to train a paraeducator, that’s time they’re not able to focus more on the students.”
Interest in special education as a career has declined in schools across the nation, which only exacerbates the issue of hiring qualified paraeducators. This trend isn’t new for educators in MCPS, who already struggled to fill paraeducator jobs. As a result, people who apply for paraeducator jobs are often hired, even if they are not a perfect fit for the job.
Noell, who has suffered firsthand from the lack of staffing, says she’s dealt with personnel who make her job harder.
“It’s not like we are swimming in candidates for people to [become paraeducators,]” Noell said. “So you let people stay that aren’t performing to expectation, or are not taking feedback, or are resistant to following direction.”
The funding crisis encompasses more than just paraeducators. Many special education programs use a reward system to reinforce positive behaviors in their students, but there is no money allocated toward purchasing these resources.
MCPS paraeducator Destinee Jackson, who has worked in the Comprehensive Autism Preschool Program (CAPP) for a year, immediately noticed a lack of budgeted money for her classroom.
“The CAPP program at Rosemary Hills mainly lacks funding,” Jackson said. “The teachers have to come out of pocket for most of the supplies our students need.”
Even if all paraeducators were substantially trained and qualified for the job, the distribution of children with disabilities to special education programs remains a complex process that can easily become imbalanced. Students are assigned to certain special education programs through their Individualized Education Program (IEP), a written plan that outlines a student’s yearly educational goals. Depending on a student’s disability and the severity of their needs, they are assigned to different special education programs within MCPS.
However, students are commonly assigned to special education programs that only meet the bare minimum of their needs. For example, students in K-2 Classic Autism programs have a range of extremely different needs, with some students’ disabilities impacting their abilities more heavily than others, making it difficult for teachers to balance instruction.
“I have kids in my classrooms that could go to Extensions or LFI,” Noell said. “My program is getting an influx of kids that aren’t appropriately placed, which means that my classroom isn’t even really running the way that it’s supposed to be run.”
Additionally, the uncertainty surrounding federal special education funding has only exacerbated budget problems, as President Trump looks to defund and ultimately close the Department of Education. Hundreds of federal workers within the department were laid off as the Trump administration aims to return education regulations to state control. Parents have questions about how special education will be funded for families of students with disabilities who rely on the Department of Education’s services.
Superintendent Thomas admitted the budget was not a perfect resolution, but the $46.6 million allocated towards special education is not enough to fill the holes in staffing. Cano said the millions of dollars could be put towards other uses that would encourage existing personnel to stay in their positions.
“[The Board of Education] needs to make it a priority that they’re going to budget for paid trainings for paraeducators,” Cano said. “There needs to be a level of respect and dignity in the job for paraeducators, and that only comes with administration and the Board of Education collaborating to make sure that happens.”