By Adam Pagnucco.
In a recent post, I mentioned that MCPS’s central office spending had increased by 31% in three years, which was roughly triple the rate of spending growth in the school system’s entire budget. Derek Turner, Chief Communications Officer for MCPS, provided this explanation to us on changes in that spending category.
The increase in the MCPS Category I budget reflects a significant investment (nearly $9 million between 2017- 2020) to replace legacy business systems that are inefficient and ineffective for a school system of 167, 000 students and 24,000 employees. For context, MCPS has a set of legacy business systems that include paper-based timekeeping for employees; siloed financial systems that do not speak with one another; and a human resources system that relies heavily on the manual input of information. Given how outdated the systems are, when these systems come online, we will believe it will lead to long-term savings for the school system. Details about this increase can be found in the budget documents archived here: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/budget/archive.aspx.