July 17, 2024
As many of our readers are probably aware, there are several upcoming boundary studies the scope of which will include the majority of the county.
This makes the school utilization report recently released by the Planning Board even more salient. This article will look over the school utilization reports, analyze them and attempt to put them into the context of the upcoming boundary studies.
Part 1 will start to look at the system wide level data and then the following parts will look at more details and how specific schools and boundaries may be impacted.
Data and Reports
Full school utilization report from planning department (this is the full detailed 226 page report that looks into detail both at the macro level of the entire school system as well as at the school level): https://montgomeryplanningboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/AttachmentB_FY25SUR_6-20-24.pdf
Individual Schools listing (simple charts with projected enrollment and capacity by school): https://montgomeryplanningboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/AttachmentA_FY25AST_6-20-24.pdf
Planning board staff report (summary and explanation of different charts and aspects related to data in the full report): https://montgomeryplanningboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FY25-Annual-School-Test-School-Utilization-Report_6-20-24_Final.pdf
School Utilization Report Analysis
Stand Out Details
Over Utilized Schools
The over utilization of some schools causes increased impact taxes for development in the areas. The report summarizes that “In FY2025, the following school service areas will be placed in Utilization Premium Payment (UPP) tiers:
- Tier 1
- HS – James Hubert Blake, Paint Branch
- MS – Argyle
- Tier 2
- ES – Arcola, Burning Tree, Cashell, Flower Valley, Lake Seneca, Thurgood Marshall
- Tier 3
- ES – Mill Creek Towne”
In order to show up in these Tiers for UPP, they have to exceed the utilizations and seat deficit for the projected enrollment in the 2028-2029 school years described in the chart above.
You can see the full list of utilization projections for each school in charts in this PDF:
AttachmentA_FY25AST_6-20-24Something to keep in mind is that at times, projected utilization can be manipulated by other changes as we previously reported about happening in Clarksburg.
History of School Related Planning Decisions and Policy Changes
While issues related to school utilization have existed pretty much for all time since public schools began, Montgomery County had a long time policy called a moratorium that would restrict new housing development in areas with over 120% utilization to address overcrowding in schools. This had created issues in many areas of the county where schools were filled and thus prevented development of any kind and for a long time.
Per this WUSA9 piece, in 2019, “Large sections of Montgomery County, Maryland are on track to be slapped with a building moratorium beginning July 1, thanks to an ordinance that links school overcrowding to development restrictions. Areas served by six overcrowded high schools and the majority of middle and elementary schools that feed them are in the cross-hairs. The schools are Blair, Einstein, Northwood, Walter Johnson, Richard Montgomery and Quince Orchard.”
As moratoriums started to impact more and more areas, the County Council and Planning Department began to look at options to allow residential building to continue.
The County Council removed moratoriums with the explanation that impact taxes in crowded areas from the UPP would help pay for schools.
Now Council President Friedson talked about the change in this WUSA9 article from 2020 about the legislation that removed moratoriums “In addition to revenue brought in through school taxes, any new residential construction projects filed after January 1, 2021, will be subject to Utilization Premium Payments or UPPs which will be paid by the development company. “And those are a premium above the cost of the impact of a student,” explained Friedson. “It’s a premium payment, an extra fee when you are building in an area that has existing overcrowded schools.” Friedson believes that premium payment will drive additional funding for schools where the overcrowding is currently taking place.”
In 2023, Impact Taxes starting in FY2024 increased greatly because of increased construction costs of schools based on this law and change as explained in this planning document and detailed further in this piece by Montgomery Perspective.
This resulted, however, in the Montgomery County council then unanimously passed a bill to cap these increases at 20% which means less money going towards school construction.
Another minor but more recent change is that the Planning Board has changed it’s rules of procedure requiring more advanced notice of public testimony. From the same email that had the school utilization reports:
“Please advise: The Planning Board approved changes to its Rules of Procedure on June 27, 2024 as part of their annual review of the Rules which will become effective on July 1, 2024. People wishing to testify or submit materials will need to sign up and submit materials by 12 noon two days before the Board meeting. This will allow staff more time to help people who need assistance and provide the Board with materials. The Chair has discretion to enforce this provision, and will be flexible throughout July, with hopes that in September people will have adjusted to these changes.”
Population and Enrollment Stagnated With Pandemic
One thing that was possibly enabled MCPS and Montgomery County to catch up is that after decades of quick growth in MCPS enrollment that was projected to continue, the covid pandemic greatly impacted both MCPS enrollment and Montgomery County population growth.
As you can see in this Montgomery Planning article on growth in MCPS and the county at large, the projected enrollment in 2024 was 175,000 instead of the current numbers somewhere around 160,000.
We have done extensive reporting on the impact of school closures as it related to school enrollment at MCPS and at the state level as well as the population changes.
System Wide Analysis
As you can see in the image below, MCPS high schools are highly overutilized with that over utilization projected to increase until it is at its highest levels since 2009 in 2026, right before the two newly constructed high schools come into play to relieve that overcrowding.
Middle school utilization is not too bad without any schools projected to be over 120% utilization.
Elementary schools are also relatively stable except different than Middle School utilization they do still have some schools at an extremely high utilization rate.
Potential Impact on Boundary Changes Based on Utilization Projections
In Part 2 will look at more details from these lengthy reports including how we can look at the charts like on page 6 from the staff report to predict movement of numbers of students going into the new schools and from other specific schools with boundary changes.
1 Comment
Comments are closed.