As the Montgomery County Council tries to cobble together a budget that doesn’t include a 6% tax increase to fully cover the school system’s proposed budget, school officials paint a dire picture of possibilities.
In to Montgomery County Public School employees, Superintendent Thomas Taylor said, “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, our financial situation is bad.”
“To be completely fair, our county council has a lot of difficult choices to make,” he added.
That said, Taylor laid out some stark choices that would have to be made if the council didn’t fully fund the school system’s proposed $3.8 billion budget proposal.
The council rejected a 6% property tax hike proposed by Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, who suggested the increase to cover the superintendent’s spending plan.
The list of potential cuts laid out by Taylor 鈥� increments of roughly $18 million 鈥� included some worst-case scenarios: “Right now, county council is considering a reduction to the school systems budget request in 10% increments, or tranches, of our increase that’s been planned. Basically, the county council will decide how much to cut the school systems budget request by those 10% buckets or tranches, and they roughly equate to $17.9 million per tranche in those increments.”
“As you go down that list, you’ll start seeing things like 220 middle school teachers,” said David Stein, the president of the Montgomery County Education Association.
“If we start cutting those levels of teachers, then not only are we going to see class sizes rise, but we’re going to see loss of electives and opportunities for students.”
He told WTOP that the list of cuts includes all 25 social workers at the county’s high schools, where “those people are providing services to students every single day, students who are in great need.”
The council has wrapped up its initial analysis of agency budget requests and is in the process of deciding whether to continue to make cuts to the total county operating budget of $8 billion or to avoid deep cuts to county services.
According to a county budget summary released Tuesday, “based on resource changes and reductions to date, the Council will need to reduce the Executive’s recommended budget by an additional $113.7 million to approve a balanced budget.”
The county council will take what are referred to as before taking a final vote ahead of a June 1 budget deadline.
At that point, the school system will have to take a vote on the money the council allocates to it. That’s expected by June 4.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
漏 2026 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
