By Adam Pagnucco.
Let’s start with this.
There must not be layoffs in MCPS.
Historically, MCPS has been the crown jewel of Montgomery County. Its excellence has been our primary attractor for residents and employers. It’s why people pay high taxes, high home prices and high rents to live here. MoCo’s social contract is this: you may pay a lot, but you’re going to get a lot – especially great schools. If the schools go downhill, that social contract will lie in shreds and many people will move out – or not move in at all.
Layoffs now are a threat to MCPS’s future. MCPS is in a heated competition with other school districts to recruit teachers. How is the school system supposed to recruit new teachers when it is laying off new teachers? It will be sending this message to job applicants: you can’t be assured of a career here, so only come here if you’re planning on going somewhere else later. What kind of message is that?
One alternative to layoffs is furloughs. The advantage to furloughs is that they are not terminations. However, their impact is more widespread than layoffs because far more workers would be covered in order to save an equivalent amount of money. Their impact on morale, recruitment and retention might be comparable to layoffs.
Imagine if MCPS becomes the only school district in the region to implement layoffs or furloughs at a time when we are not in a recession. What would that say about our county?
How do we get out of this? It turns out that this matter is not insurmountable, either in the short term or the long term. It will require some courage, some creativity and some trust but we can fix this. I will explain how soon.
But first, let’s be honest about our problems at this moment in time. I see four big ones.
Problem One: MCPS has a short term issue in its budget.
MCPS is not showing obvious signs of financial stress but its management is struggling to deal with the consequences of getting $31 million less than it requested. In their statement of May 24, Interim Superintendent Monique Felder and Board of Education President Karla Silvestre outlined a number of adjustments including reductions in force.
To those who believe consideration of layoffs or furloughs is a bluff, check out the central office memo sent to principals on Friday. Sure, we can complain about management incompetence, and maybe we should. But letting MCPS stew in its foul budget juices is not a prudent course of action when the reputation of our schools is on the line.
Problem Two: The county council does not trust MCPS’s budget numbers.
This has been building for quite some time but it’s now crystal clear: a large majority of the council does not trust what they hear from MCPS. They are not confident that new money will actually go to the classroom and benefit students. They have good reason for that skepticism, but this lack of trust is a real barrier that prevents collaboration and problem solving.
Problem Three: The state’s maintenance of effort law prevents flexibility in helping MCPS.
The state’s maintenance of effort (MOE) law, which dominated debate over MCPS’s budget in the Great Recession era, is a growing issue between the county and the schools. The MOE law has changed over the years, and has grown more complicated with the state’s Blueprint program, but in broad terms it holds that a county’s local per pupil contribution to schools is the minimum for what it owes a school system in the next fiscal year. A county can go above that contribution, thereby raising the floor, but it cannot go below it without a waiver from the State Board of Education.
The county has been steadily increasing its local per pupil contribution in the last few years, especially since funding is way up while enrollment is down. Because of the MOE law, any short term aid to MCPS may get locked up in the funding base for the future, a risk to the county’s long term finances.
Problem Four: MCPS has a terrible labor-management relationship.
Last week, I profiled former Superintendent Jerry Weast, who made an alliance with labor a centerpiece of his largely successful efforts to extract more money from the county. That alliance has fallen apart in recent years, though Felder – to her credit – is trying to improve relations with labor. If MCPS remains a house divided, it cannot build its funding, its prestige or its work climate to the levels that employees, students and stakeholders deserve. And its divisions reflect poorly on its reputation with its paymasters at the county council, not to mention the county’s state legislators.
That’s quite a list of problems. Any solutions must deal with them to succeed.
And what are those solutions? I have a few ideas. We’ll discuss them in Part Two.