MCPS’s Budget Cut 415 Positions. Officials Told the Council It Meant 47 Layoffs and 162 Forced Transfers

The fiscal 2027 budget the Montgomery County Board of Education adopted in June cut 415 full-time positions. At a County Council committee session Monday, MCPS officials said the cuts ended with 47 people laid off, and a Council staff memo shows 162 more were involuntarily transferred and 20 retired from the eliminated jobs.

Forty of the 46 layoffs listed on MCPS’s position-by-position spreadsheet were social workers: 24 from high schools, 12 from middle schools and four from the Department of Student Well-being. MCPS told the committee one more layoff, tied to “a very specific and unique position,” came at the end of the summer. Bethesda Magazine first reported the 46 job losses in September, citing an MCPS spokesperson, and the teachers union told the magazine most were social workers.

“I just want to say that these are real people, and real jobs, and that have an impact in the classroom,” said Council Member Will Jawando, who chairs the Education and Culture Committee, as he opened the session.

The memo, by Council analysts Doug Prouty and Kristin Cummings, also shows MCPS paid $16,026,346 to 577 retirees after offering a retirement incentive meant to head off layoffs.

Who lost jobs, by union

MCPS’s spreadsheet lists 419 positions, and 196.5 of them were new positions never filled or jobs vacant in the 2025-26 school year, the memo says (page 3). The adopted budget counts the net reduction as 415.

• Teachers union (MCEA): 215.5 positions cut, 41 employees laid off, 33 involuntarily transferred, 2 retired.
• Administrators and business managers (MCAAP and MCBOA): 35 positions cut, 5 laid off, 16 transferred, 3 retired.
• Support staff (SEIU Local 500): 168.5 positions cut, no layoffs, 113 transferred, 15 retired.

The memo’s table shows 46 layoffs. MCPS’s written response in the same packet puts the reduction in force at “a total of 47 positions across MCEA and MCAAP”, the figure officials gave the committee Monday.

Beyond the budget cuts, MCPS made 808 involuntary transfers of MCEA members, 292 of SEIU members and 27 of administrators between December and June, according to the memo (page 4). An MCPS official told the committee there were “over 1,200 involuntary transfers” across the three unions in that period, and that the district had projected a drop of 4,800 students in kindergarten through 12th grade when it set school staffing in February.

$16 million paid to 577 retirees

MCPS paid 577 retirees a combined $16,026,346 as of July 1: $5,934,000 in incentive payments, $1,820,376 for unused annual leave and $8,271,969 for unused sick leave, according to the memo (page 5).

MCPS announced the $10,000 incentive for 10-month employees and $12,000 for 12-month employees on May 21 for anyone who filed by June 5, but the memo says “the incentive was provided to all, regardless of the date on which they filed their application.” The 279 MCPS retirees who filed by April 1, before the incentive was announced, received $2,874,000 in incentive payments (page 5).

“A primary objective was to minimize the impact of position reductions and possible Reductions in Force (RIFs),” MCPS said of the incentive. Savings data “is not yet available,” the memo says.

About 278 special education aide jobs were vacant in August

MCPS had 739.8 vacant school-based full-time-equivalent positions on Aug. 25, up from 622.7 on June 15, including “approximately 278 FTE in special education paraeducator positions,” according to the memo (page 7). Paraeducator jobs do not appear among the positions cut in the memo’s budget table or in MCPS’s spreadsheet.

MCPS told the Council the two vacancy counts reflect different points in the staffing cycle, since end-of-year resignations are processed after June 15. MCPS recorded 853 new hires and promotions as of Aug. 31, including 111 special education paraeducators (page 6).

Mental health services

MCPS cut $1.6 million in contracted school-based mental health therapy, previously awarded to Jewish Social Services Agency and Thrive Behavioral Health, and is relying on a $12 million state grant to the county Department of Health and Human Services and existing county programs instead, according to its response (pages 8 and 10). MCPS told the Council that “there may be an increase in waitlists for services” (page 11).

What MCPS told the committee

MCPS Chief of Staff Essie McGuire said the cuts came out of a budget process that began with the superintendent’s proposal last December and shifted repeatedly through the spring. She pointed to declining enrollment and the size of the workforce: “There are over 12,000 teachers in MCPS,” she said, and “a change in the enrollment does necessarily often impact a change in positions.”

Asked whether the retirement incentive avoided layoffs, MCPS officials said they could not count that employee by employee. They said the retirements opened positions that let human resources place teachers in jobs matching their certification, and that the June 5 timing helped place teachers before summer.

Council Member Kristin Mink asked MCPS to give employees more time to weigh retirement offers in future years.

The cuts also eliminated 27 pupil personnel worker positions; 26 of those employees were involuntarily transferred and one retired, Council staff told the committee. Pupil personnel workers will no longer coordinate schools’ student well-being teams, conduct routine residency checks or review homeschooling portfolios, according to the slides. McGuire said they will still handle more complex residency cases, such as those involving foster care.

MCPS is relying on a $12 million state-funded grant administered by the county Department of Health and Human Services to keep mental health providers in schools, officials said. “This was kind of a Band-Aid ripoff moment,” Mink said of the shift of mental health work from MCPS to the county, adding that families have been “calling phone numbers that they had, and those phones are in a drawer somewhere.”

Enrollment is falling faster than MCPS projected

MCPS has 3,200 fewer students this year than it projected, on top of the 4,800-student drop it had already planned for, Chief Financial Officer Ivon Alfonso-Windsor told the committee. That puts the decline at about 8,000 students. “We had 600 less kindergarten students than we were expecting,” she said. Officials said the shortfall from projections is roughly 1,000 to 1,100 students in elementary school and about 1,000 in high school, with middle school holding steady.

Officials said schools are now staffed above what current enrollment calls for, and that MCPS will not cut positions in the middle of the year. Looking ahead to next year’s budget, Alfonso-Windsor said, “decreased staffing will result in a lot of involuntary transfers.”

Most departing students are moving to other school districts in the United States or Maryland, or out of the country, an MCPS official said, and a substantial number leave for unknown reasons. “Everybody keeps thinking that people are going to private schools. That’s not the data that we’re seeing,” the official said. MCPS plans to share more withdrawal data with the Board of Education at a capital budget work session next week.

How the cuts came about

The County Council approved $61,045,952 less for MCPS than the Board of Education requested, and a one-time $25 million retiree health contribution offset part of the gap, leaving $35,919,204 in reductions and 415 fewer positions in the budget the board adopted June 4 (memo pages 2-3). Bethesda Magazine covered the superintendent’s proposed cuts on May 21, the retirement incentive, the board’s 7-1 vote and what came next, and Montgomery Community Media covered the May proposal. Moderately MOCO reported in August on communications job postings that drew backlash after the cuts.

The staff memo suggested the committee ask whether “the potential for additional RIFs” is being discussed for fiscal 2028 (page 13). During contract talks in September, MCPS told The MoCo Show and Bethesda Magazine “We are not threatening reductions in force,” responding to union claims about its bargaining proposals.

Watch the session

The full committee session is on the Council’s YouTube channel (MCPS discussion begins about 14 minutes in). The staff memo and MCPS’s written responses are in the meeting packet.

Still unanswered

• What savings does MCPS expect from the retirement incentive, and when will it report them?
• How many of the roughly 278 special education paraeducator vacancies remain unfilled now?
• How many of this year’s withdrawals are coded “unknown,” and what share went to private schools?

We have not yet put these questions to MCPS; this story will be updated with any response.

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