Montgomery County schools may lose over 400 positions due to budget shortfall

Montgomery County public schools will feel emptier next year due to a budget shortfall that is expected to cost the district more than 400 jobs.

Staffers who now fear for their livelihoods, including social workers and psychologists, showed up in force at Thursday night’s school board meeting to decry the proposed cuts. They said district leaders should safeguard the jobs of people who serve its most vulnerable students.

Dozens of them wore shirts that read, “School social workers save lives.” Others hoisted posters that warned fewer psychologists would mean more students in crisis.

“A student who is not well is a student who is not learning,” school social worker Priscila Lemos said.

The County Council on Thursday adopted a $7.9 billion operating budget, nearly half of which will flow to the public school system.

The budget provides the district with $143 million more than it received in the current fiscal year, but it falls tens of millions of dollars short of the number Superintendent Thomas Taylor said was necessary to operate Maryland’s largest school district.

MCPS is grappling with steep inflation and declining enrollment, stretching the district’s finances. In a system where roughly 90% of funs go toward personnel, Taylor said, staff cuts were impossible to avoid.

Shortly after the council’s vote, the superintendent emailed his team his plan to address a $36 million funding gap.

“Reductions at this level cannot occur without impacting employees and teams across MCPS. To be clear, this will interrupt the services that we provide and this will touch every aspect of our school system,” he wrote in the email.

The school board will finalize the budget reconciliation next month.

Taylor’s plan calls for cutting about 435 positions, including more than 30 social worker jobs, over 100 special education resource teacher slots and about 20 psychologist positions.

Some of the jobs that face elimination are currently vacant.

The district is also proposing a retirement incentive program, which they hope will free up more positions for other displaced employees.

“Due to the significant reduction in positions resulting from the budget shortfall, as well as enrollment decrease, MCPS will be offering incentives for employees who are currently eligible to retire,” read a budget presentation.

Those employees could receive up to $12,000, with retirements effective July 1.

The cuts span the district, which employs more than 25,000 people, and include English composition assistants, media assistants and maintenance workers.

Taylor said he tried to keep cuts as far away as possible from the classroom.

The district would also lose two executive-level positions, including an associate superintendent. Those two top jobs would collectively save the district more than half a million dollars.

“These reductions are not a negative reflection on any one person’s work or any group of hard-working teammates — these reductions are a reflection of needing to meet a financial reality,” Taylor wrote in his email.

Montgomery County Education Association President David Stein said the school board should value people over programs.

He urged members to comb the budget, looking at expensive programs, and ask for each one: “Do we need it? And do we need it right now?”

This article has been updated.