By Adam Pagnucco.
Previously, I introduced this series and asked the candidates about what they believed was MCPS’s biggest problem, their experience with budgets, their opinions on the incumbents, their positions on opt outs and their positons on police officers in schools. Now let’s talk about teacher salary transfers.
A year ago, I wrote a five-part series detailing how MCPS regularly transfers money budgeted for instructional salaries towards other purposes. Back in September, MCPS requested another transfer of $11.4 million out of teacher salary money, which was approved without discussion by the county council. Let’s find out how the candidates feel about this.
Question: Montgomery Perspective has reported on MCPS transfers of millions of dollars out of instructional salaries and towards other purposes. Is this a problem? If it is, how would you fix it?
Lynne Harris, At-Large (Incumbent): I’m never one to rush to judgement, and the Board has been asking direct questions to understand why those object transfers have occurred. As we discussed at the February 22 BOE meeting, object transfers between categories had a sound explanation — teacher salaries had increased so much in the FY24 budget that the Title I grants couldn’t cover them, so other functions serving Title I schools were transferred into the grant, and the Title I salaries — typically covered by that federal funding – were covered by the operating budget. I pushed quite directly the point that the information supplied in the public facing memos simply did not tell the public the story about where funds were going and why, and how the mission was being served.
Finance staff agreed to revise memoranda coming to the Board to include narrative information explaining why funds are being moved between categories, and what – specifically – they are being used for.
It all comes down to intently reviewing the information coming forward from the system, asking clear questions, and staying focused on doing better to be more transparent and accountable to the public.
Sharif Hidayat, At-Large: It is a problem. It will require stakeholders to have candid and more frequent conversations throughout the year to bring that number down.
Melissa Kim, At-Large: No response
Jonathan Long, At-Large: Taxpayers need to have faith in the County Counsel and the MCPS Board to use funds as intended and as communicated to taxpayers. Repeated budget variances of the same type indicate poor management and oversight. As pointed out by Montgomery Perspective, the pandemic was a non-routine event during which time schools had to reallocate funds to address the unusual circumstance. I think it is very appropriate to do things like reallocate teacher salaries that would have paid for vacant positions to a line item for hiring and retention bonuses if the school could not hire enough teachers during the prior semester. Taking that money and putting it into a rainy-day fund does not address the staffing issue and should probably not be approved.
I’m not sure why regular instructional salaries are separate from special education salaries. Proper planning should allow MSCP to anticipate current needs. So, if there is a variance for one year, the budget needs to take that into account when projecting for future budgets. I do think that special education needs to be better funded in Montgomery County.
Fitzgerald Mofor, At-Large: This is a huge problem for me, stakeholders, educators, and students. I want to thank you for shedding light on such pernicious practices. MCPS routinely hires prior board members and administrators for advisory roles on lucrative salaries and minimal hours, while the school district transfers millions of dollars from instructional salaries. What is approved for instructional salaries gets appropriated to other miscellaneous school funding projects. In October 2023, the board of education transferred $11 million from instructional salaries with the approval of the county council. MCPS must end such practices to pay para-educators a livable wage. In doing so, para-educators will no longer endure temporary part-time status (TPT) and will be offered healthcare benefits. Going through career pathway programs to attain healthcare shows MCPS’s overall lack of fidelity towards paying support staff livable wages. I plan on fixing this issue by negotiating with colleagues to build a consensus around paying para-educators a livable wage. I plan on taking a hard stance on using my vote as leverage. Often, the proposed operating budget is unanimously passed by the Board of Education without much dissent or debate.
Rita Montoya, At-Large: The transfer of millions of dollars from instruction salaries to other purposes is a problem because that money is from unfulfilled teacher positions. Each year, instead of carrying that money over to beef up instructional salaries or provide other educator benefits, the money is diverted to some other, previously unintended purpose. This is problematic from an operational standpoint—there is money being taken away from teacher positions—and also a budget allocation standpoint as the County Council and Executive provided recommendations and allocations specific to MCPS’ request yet the money is actually and ultimately going to another category. This behavior lends itself to the view of the Board as lacking in transparency and oversight and makes it challenging to secure the funding needed to fully operate, staff and resource MCPS.
Brenda Diaz, District 2: Yes, it is a massive problem when MCPS transfers millions of dollars out of instructional salaries and towards other purposes. The lack of transparency in the purpose of raising taxes and how that money is actually distributed has led to a lack of trust in the County Council, but most especially in MCPS. When the real purpose of public funds is not revealed, it raises doubts in the community as to how any extra funding will benefit our students. Unfortunately, oversight failures on the part of the current Board of Education means MCEA’s and MCPS’s requests continue to be approved without deeper consideration of how money is spent. I will apply a laser focus on responsible resource allocation within MCPS, including collaborating with the union to draft an attractive recruitment and retention package with the goal of fully-staffing our schools.
Ricky Fai Mui, District 2: Absolutely, this is a problem! My Expertise lies in reducing administrative overhead. I have seen many instances in the MCPS operational budget where consultants were hired, at the expense of $ millions of taxpayer dollars. I wonder what oversight is given to these consultants, and whether their input resulted in financial savings. Our precious taxpayer funds are not meant to be diverted to pay outrageous salaries; where a large dichotomy exists: Oversight costs more than the Front-Line Employee. If the front-line educators are doing the heavy lifting of preparing lesson plans, researching optimal methodology to deliver classroom instruction, answering questions or concerns, nurturing the intellectual development of our children; then these educators should be fairly compensated. Instead, their salaries are barely sufficient to secure accommodations in MoCo. Insufficient pay leads to shortage of qualified teachers, which lead to larger classroom size and larger student: teacher ratio, which creates overworked teachers, which leads to burn out and employment relocation. If left unchecked, this cycle becomes devastating to our silent student stakeholders. Teachers would rather minimize the homework or project requirements to mitigate the administrative functions outside of classroom time, which results in sub-optimal reinforcement of the academic lesson for our children.
Rebecca Smondrowski, District 2 (Incumbent): MCPS and the Board of Education spend significant time creating an annual budget that prioritizes instructional resources for students and salaries for staff. Included in the budget are FTE’s for employee positions. Throughout the year positions may remain or become vacant due to employee resignations, retirements or hard to fill areas. This money that is set aside for positions is repurposed to support other needs in the system. These realignments do not take away from staff negotiated compensation. Our staff is the most valuable asset in supporting students. I have always supported salary increases to recognize the invaluable role every employee plays in shaping our future generations. Competitive compensation is essential to attract and retain high-quality professionals and acknowledge their hard work and dedication. I will continue to advocate and support compensating our staff that reflects their importance in our system.
Aby Thioye, District 2: Like many of MCPS’s problems, this stems from financial mismanagement. I believe that recruiting and retaining qualified teachers is essential to returning MCPS’s focus to academic excellence. That has to include meaningfully raising teachers’ salaries across the board, including bonuses to reward high-performing teachers. However, it makes no sense to raise taxes to pay for such a raise when it is clear that increasing salaries would be possible now but for the board’s financial mismanagement. We also need to take a hard look at the diversion of teacher’s salaries for questionable expenditures such as “contractual services expenses for social emotional learning.”
Natalie Zimmerman, District 2: Yes, this is a problem. Not only does MCPS need to uphold the contracts signed with the associations, but we need to be attractive to high-quality teachers and subsequently retain them. While the County Council cannot and should not ask for the Board of Education to spend its money in a specific manner, the Board should open up its budget and increase transparency. Every single dollar of the budget must be spent to increase the quality of our students’ learning conditions. As a member of the Board of Education, I will be opening the budget and increasing transparency.
Shebra Evans, District 4 (Incumbent): I want the broader community to know and understand the budget. I also believe it is equally important for MCPS to make notations when there is a shifting of funds between categories. A recent discussion at the board table addressed a similar issue regarding the transfer of money out of the Office of Special Education. The shift was not as it appeared but warranted a discussion to give the public a better understanding of what actually occurred.
Bethany Mandel, District 4: This was such critical reporting, and unfortunately, it largely fell on deaf ears. Those in charge of MCPS don’t care about out of control spending; they’re participating in it themselves. Instead of holding hearings about how families should be forced to allow their students to read Pride Puppy in kindergarten (how many hours did the BOE spend on that this year?), hearings about financial stewardship would be a much better use of taxpayer time. We need a member on the Board loudly and repeatedly saying that.
Laura Stewart, District 4: It is important that MCPS use as much of the dollars slated for instructional salaries as possible. If for some reason they can’t fill a position, there should be a plan to use that money for another needed instructional position or to the substitute pool, possibly adding incentives to acquire qualified long term substitutes. We need strategies to fill important hard-to-find roles like math teacher substitutes. I understand that there will be a need to allocate money to areas that had not been planned for during the school year, like cost overruns for the health plans this year. This extra cost required a freeze on ordering some supplies for teachers. An adequate reserve fund should be used for this purpose.
Next: side payments to MCPS employees.