Amid potential position cuts, MCPS employees urge council to fulfill school board’s budget request
Educators warn of negative impacts on students
By
Ashlyn CampbellMay 14, 2026 11:25 a.m.
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Dozens of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) employees and supporters stood outside the County Council building in Rockville Thursday morning, holding signs, waving to honking cars and urging the council to fully fund the school board’s budget request.
The rally comes as the council is scheduled to take a straw vote Tuesday at 1 p.m. on the 2027 fiscal year budget. The vote, which is not binding, was scheduled for 9:30 a.m., but was postponed.
For Emily Keith, a media assistant at Garrett Park Elementary who was at the rally, the fight to keep the hundreds of positions potentially on the chopping block is personal – media assistants at all school levels are one of the positions on the line.
“It would devastate school library, media programs across the county, and it’s going to have a huge impact on our students,” Keith told Bethesda Today on Thursday. “It’s just going to have a great impact in [students’] ability to access the collection, in keeping the collection organized and ensuring that they can continue to grow as lifelong readers and develop more literacy skills.”
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Superintendent Thomas Taylor shared in a Tuesday email that at least 263 positions may be cut if the County Council doesn’t provide the $2.52 billion that the board is requesting from the council.
Taylor and union officials have decried the potential cuts, and members of educator unions, such as Chris Campbell, an English composition assistant and Advanced Placement coordinator at Quince Orchard High in Gaithersburg, are advocating against the lack of funding and potential cuts.
“We’re asking obviously, one, to keep our jobs, but also to keep it where doing our job is tenable while living within Montgomery County,” Campbell said.
Although County Executive Marc Elrich (D) in March put forward a proposed operating budget that would have fully funded the school district’s request with a 6% property tax rate increase, the majority of the council is opposed to any property tax rate increase.
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Last month, County Council President Natali Fani-González (D-Dist. 6) offered an alternative budget framework for fiscal year 2027 that did not include Elrich’s proposed property tax rate increase and included lower raises for all county and school employees. The plan was criticized by labor leaders, and last week the council voted to approve negotiated contracts with three unions for government workers, but did not vote on raises for MCPS employees.
In a video to MCPS staff members Tuesday, Taylor said the council was considering a reduction to the school system’s budget in 10% tranches – amounting to about $17.9 million per tranche.
In a letter to the council Tuesday, Taylor outlined the tranches of MCPS employees that would be trimmed if the council decided to move forward with not fully funding the district’s budget request, aiming at reducing impacts on classroom instruction.
According to the list, some of the first positions that could be cut include instructional specialists, elementary, middle and high school media assistants and social workers, college and career navigators and an associate superintendent.
For Campbell, one of the almost 40 high school English composition assistants that would be in the first tranche to be cut, the reductions would hurt every school in Montgomery County. In his role, Campbell said he conducts data analysis to determine which students need support in the classroom.
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“We are working to really help, especially the freshmen and sophomores … learn how to write productively,” Campbell said. “Some of these [cuts] don’t make sense if we’re trying to really serve the children in the community.”
MCPS employees who may not be on the list to be cut raised concerns as they protested the reductions outside of the council building Thursday, noting that without robust support staff, more strain will be put on teachers.
“Everybody in the building has an important role to play,” third grade teacher Sarah Campbell told Bethesda Today on Thursday. “An investment in the budget is an investment in the future of the county.”
Concerns raised by educators were echoed by union leaders in an interview with Bethesda Today on Tuesday, as well as Taylor himself in the email to councilmembers.
“These cuts are going to affect families and students without a doubt, at all levels,” David Stein, president of the Montgomery County Education Association, said Tuesday. “Depending on how much the council decides to devastate the schools, we are going to see families are going to see significant decreases in the services that their students are getting, in the variety of experiences that they can get in what they’re seeing in the classroom … It’s simply unacceptable.”
Taylor asked the council Tuesday to not move forward with the reductions, saying in the letter that significant reductions would “negatively impact hundreds of County employees who live, work, and pay taxes here, but significant reductions to our funding request will have a substantial impact on the services that those hard working teammates provide. … This will take years to repair.”
The County Council is set to hold a straw vote on the budget Thursday at 1 p.m., before holding a final vote on May 21.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine