‘Excruciating and painful’: MoCo school board votes to cut 415 positions to close $36M MCPS budget gap
$3.72B fiscal year 2027 spending plan approved in 7-1 decision
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Ashlyn CampbellJune 4, 2026 2:23 p.m. | Updated: June 4, 2026 2:26 p.m.
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This is an ongoing story that will be updated as more information becomes available.
In a 7-1 vote during a contentious school board meeting, the Montgomery County school board on Thursday adopted a $3.72 billion fiscal year 2027 budget for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), agreeing to cut 415 district positions to close a $36 million spending gap.
“This is incredibly personal, excruciating and painful,” school board President Grace Rivera-Oven said prior to the board’s vote during its meeting in Rockville. “That being said, true leadership means confronting reality.”
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The vote was the culmination of emotionally-fraught deliberations after the County Council last month adopted a $7.9 billion county operating budget – including the $3.72 billion for MCPS that represented a $143 million year-over-year spending increase for the district. That MCPS budget represented a $36 million shortfall between the district’s expenses and its approved funding.
Educators, school staff and community members and students showed up in droves to Thursday’s meeting to plead with the board to not move forward with the reductions in staff proposed by MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor to close the budget gap. The meeting room often erupted in cheers during public comment as members of the public enumerated the many impacts that the proposed cuts would have on students and families.
“Softwares and apps do not wipe tears, do not consult parents who lose their children to suicide, people who are homeless …,” Abeba Gebrehiwot, an MCPS family engagement specialist, told the board Thursday. “We are there, we’re not the ones to be on the front page of anybody’s paper, but we are in the hearts and minds of the school staff, the students and the parents.”
Several audience members shouted as the board meeting proceeded, including a staff member who stated that social workers, among the proposed cuts, were those who supported students and staff after the Feb. 9 shooting at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville.
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“Who’s going to support next year’s shooting?” the staff member said before leaving the room.
The 415 positions that were cut were fewer than Taylor’s initial recommendation of 435 full-time equivalent positions. In a late afternoon Tuesday email, Taylor announced to district staff that he had revised his list of proposed position cuts.
Initially recommending more than 430 position cuts, Taylor reduced the total to 415, with the list of reductions now including unfilled vacancies and newly proposed positions — such as 28 new security assistant jobs — in place of some existing jobs that were on the chopping block. Among the existing jobs that were restored are 18 school psychologists, 27 college and career navigators and 15 school staff development teachers.
Prior to adopting the budget, board members expressed the difficulty of the vote, sharing that they acknowledged the cuts would impact services for students.
Board member Rita Montoya was the only board member to vote against adopting the proposed budget, stating she didn’t believe that options for budget savings were adequately explored.
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“Because I cannot look you, our community in the eye and say that I feel we’ve done that, I cannot support this budget,” Montoya said.
Budget background
Taylor presented a $3.78 billion recommended budget in December, a spending plan that represented a 5% increase over current spending and included staff salary increases and a goal of reducing elementary school class sizes by at least one student. The proposed 5% increase — totaling $179.7 million — was 3 percentage points lower than the roughly 8% jump in annual MCPS spending approved by the council for the current fiscal year.
In February, the Montgomery County school board tentatively approved a $3.79 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2027, which asked the county to fund about $2.52 billion of its total request, which is $331,000 less than it asked for in its initial budget proposal.
County Executive Marc Elrich (D) had called for a 6% increase to the county property tax rate to fully fund the school district’s budget request. Most councilmembers opposed that plan.
In lieu of a property tax rate increase, the council considered reductions to the school district’s requested budget in tranches of 10% — amounting to about $17.9 million per tranche. On May 12, Taylor presented proposed position reductions, listed by tranche, to the council, but implored councilmembers to not move forward with the cuts.
The council on May 21 formally adopted a $7.9 billion county operating budget and $6.3 billion six-year capital improvements program for the coming fiscal year.
On Tuesday, Taylor recommended that the district cut 415 positions – including 12 new secondary literacy specialist positions along with the new security assistant positions, among others. Taylor also recommended reductions in funding for the district’s dual enrollment program, which allows high school students to take college-credit courses, and for some contractual services.
The budget gap also impacted the capital budget, after the council approved a suggestion from Councilmember Will Jawando (D-At-large) to transfer $36 million from the county’s $6.3 billion six-year capital improvements program (CIP) to MCPS for operating expenses, funding two $18 million tranches that otherwise would have been slashed.
As a result, projects at the following elementary schools: Burning Tree in Bethesda, Cold Spring in Potomac, Highland View in Silver Spring and Piney Branch in Takoma Park will be delayed by three years, with design for the projects beginning in 2031 and construction aimed to be completed by 2034.
Projects for alternative education programs were delayed by three years, funding for technology modernization was cut from a requested $33.8 million to $16.9 million.
Construction projects for Damascus High (set to be completed in August 2031) and Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring (set to be completed in 2030) are remaining on schedule in the new CIP.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine