To Do or Not To Do – MCPS Layoff Musical Chairs

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In: Administrators, BOE, Budget, County Council, Education & Culture, Local Government, Maryland, MCPS, MCPS Enrollment, School Funding, Superintendent

June 10, 2024

It wasn’t long ago that MCPS was proclaiming hiring issues and teacher shortages.

Then last month, MCPS threw a Hail Mary after receiving only $150 million of the $180 million they requested from the County. As reported by Montgomery Perspective, this was a higher percent received of their asking than more than half of the past 18 years and should have been expected as budgets continue to increase without an increase in enrollment.

Protests at BOE and Email Campaigns

This resulted in protests at the BOE, large email campaigns to the County Council and a lot of posts on social media and elsewhere.

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MCEA says no layoffs expected

Last Friday, MCEA announced they no longer expected layoffs and furloughs and that was confirmed today with the publishing the the MCPS budget that is expected to be voted upon at tomorrow’s meeting.

MCPS Email to Staff June 10

We have also received an email sent to MCPS staff that says they are avoiding layoffs due to resignations and retirements and will maintain the class size increase (by 1). Their original estimates were that about 120 currently employed teachers could have lost a job but now say there are 256 openings and teachers impacted by the changing class size guidance are 229.8. You can see the full email at The MoCoShow website.

This may result in teachers being placed in positions outside of their current duties or their desired jobs.

New Parateacher Program to Deal with Teacher Shortages

And then in a surprising revelation, today we hear about the announcement of a new program with MCPS and local universities to help parateacher’s work to become teachers to deal with MCPS teacher shortages.

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Conclusion

MCPS needs to get better at finding waste and bad use of money. There are lots of issues plaguing MCPS but few think increasing class size and losing teacher positions (regardless of the method) are beneficial to the school as a whole.

MCPS also needs to be more proactive (instead of sending this information out the morning of the council’s budget vote) and more transparent (not sending all of these announcements on Friday afternoon/evenings to try to bury them over the weekend).

The board of education needs to do a better job holding MCPS accountable for their actions and take a deeper look at budgets and what initiatives are truly improving educational outcomes and which are not.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we need a full audit of MCPS spending. County Council members have lamented the lack of control and visibility in spending despite holding the purse strings. A full audit of MCPS could likely provide valuable information about where MCPS spending is working and where it is not.

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