By Adam Pagnucco.
The Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) is holding a rally today with one specific purpose: to persuade MCPS to ask for enough funding to finance a ten percent raise along with other priorities.
Under normal circumstances, here is how the schools’ operating budget proceeds. The superintendent releases a recommended budget in December. Within about a month, the school board tweaks it (usually by adding small amounts of money) and forwards it to the county executive. The executive then includes MCPS in his March 15 recommended budget, often lopping off a percent or two. It then heads to the county council, which may add a bit back in before it finalizes the budget in mid-May.
Twenty years ago, this process was mostly orchestrated between County Executive Doug Duncan, Superintendent Jerry Weast and Council Member Mike Subin, who headed the council’s Education Committee. Stories abound of the three sharing cigars and red wine while they hammered out a number which they would then jam through the council. MCEA and SEIU Local 500 would have input at the start of the process and then act as enforcers if anyone at the council squealed. This arrangement began to break down with the departures of Duncan and Subin in 2006 and the onset of the Great Recession a couple years later.
Now there is no orchestration. MCEA and MCPS have no relationship remotely resembling the Weast era as MCEA President Jennifer Martin discussed in our interview. It has been replaced with several rounds of contentious bargaining which continue today. Because of that, the sheer amount of money that MCEA is requesting ($145 million) and the late stage of the budget process (the executive’s budget is just three weeks away), it’s hard to imagine MCPS management adding that money to their request right now. If management were on the same page with MCEA, that money would have been put into the superintendent’s recommended budget back in December.
But MCEA’s advocacy will have an important consequence: there will be enormous pressure on County Executive Marc Elrich and the county council to – at minimum – not subtract anything from MCPS’s request, which MCEA clearly regards as inadequate. That pressure adds to the fact that the county has created more than 2,000 new positions across its agencies over the last four years while relying on federal funds that are now drying up. How do the executive and the council intend to resolve these conflicting budgetary forces? And can they do it without a tax hike?
MCEA’s press release concerning their rally is reprinted below.
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For Immediate Release
Thursday, February 23rd, 2023
Media Contact: Dalbin Osorio, mceapress@mceanea.org
100+ MoCo Educators, Students, and Community Members to Demand Better School Funding and a Fair Contract During Board of Education Rally
Rockville, MD – Scores of people are coming together to demand that Superintendent Dr. McKnight and the Board of Education increase their budget ask by $144.6 million dollars and to use a portion of those funds to pay for a 10% wage increase for all three bargaining units currently in negotiations with MCPS (MCEA, SEIU Local 500, and MCAAP/MCBOA). Parents, students, and educators will all speak about the need for an equitable budget that truly meets the moment when it comes to education.
Today at 4:30 PM, MCEA members, parents, students, and elected officials will rally outside the Board of Education, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, MD, to demand an equitable contract for all communities in Montgomery County. This rally comes on the heels of the launching of the second part of MCEA’s ‘We Love Our Public Schools’ public awareness campaign.
Montgomery Councilmember Kristin Mink (District 5), who will be in attendance at the rally, said that “for decades, Montgomery County’s reputation has been based on our strong public schools. If we want to keep that reputation for the next decade and beyond, we need to invest in our schools and our young people now, in this budget. I strongly encourage the Board of Education to put forward the robust budget that our students and staff need and deserve.”
MCEA President Jennifer Martin stated, “Montgomery County once prided itself on hiring the best educators and paying us what we are worth. Today we hear overwhelming frustration and concern because MCPS has chosen to allow educators to suffer from years of neglect and abuse. We’re losing more great talent each year due to burnout, and the number of aspiring educators is dwindling. We call on our superintendent and our Board of Education to create a budget that will make Montgomery County Public Schools a destination employer once again. We need a budget that will attract, support, and retain excellent educators for every school.”
After four+ months of negotiations, MCPS has yet to bargain substantially on proposals that address critical staffing shortages and ratios, safety concerns, and the constant underfunding of our schools.
The key sticking points in bargaining are wages, staffing, and more planning time. MCEA has also presented student-centered proposals for universal free lunches and food pantries in schools located in high-need areas and, through the most recent negotiation, all those proposals have been rejected.
MCEA represents more than 14,000 classroom teachers, school counselors, speech pathologists, media specialists and other educators on the Montgomery County Public Schools system; MCEA is one of the largest local affiliates of the National Education Association (NEA) and is a leader in building a new kind of educators’ union that responds to the needs of today’s educators and students. For more information, visit www.mceanea.org.
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