By Adam Pagnucco.
After several years of labor-management strife, the MCPS family reassembled a few months ago to jointly advocate for a large funding increase. And with the budget passed, the family has secured a big win.
A recap. MCPS stakeholders – management, employees, parents and students – all have a common interest in school funding. When I first began writing about county politics nearly twenty years ago, they were all assembled under the banner of General (excuse me, Superintendent) Jerry Weast. After Weast’s departure and repeated squeezing by a county council scarred by the maintenance of effort wars during the Great Recession, that alliance crumbled and hit its nadir during the Beidleman scandal.
Now comes new Superintendent Thomas Taylor (dubbed “TT” by his fans), who understands the importance of rebuilding MCPS and its stakeholder relationships. Job Number One was to reestablish a good rapport with labor. I knew that was progressing when teachers union President David Stein told me last fall that “We have seen a dramatic improvement in communication and openness” from Taylor. I saw more evidence of that in a joint labor-management-PTA rally in February that hearkened back to the halcyon days of Weast.
TT and his family.
As we now know, the newly approved FY26 operating budget contains one of the largest increases for MCPS in the last twenty years. It’s a coup for the fresh-faced Taylor and a morale booster for the entire MCPS family. How did it happen? Let’s review what led up to it.
The Mighty Apple
For the first time since the 1980s, the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) succeeded in ousting every school board incumbent running for reelection. In fact, the teachers spent nearly double what all the general election school board candidates spent combined. Stein wasn’t shy about pointing out his union’s success at the next school board meeting.
When Stein and the teachers speak, the school board listens.
The red shadow of the Apple was no doubt on the minds of every county elected official running for office next year – and especially those running for executive.
Taylor’s Big Ask
As the new guy in town, Taylor could have low-balled his FY26 budget recommendation in an effort to curry favor with the county council. But that would have disrupted his efforts to build relationships with labor and council members can be fickle “friends.” Instead, Taylor went big, asking for one of the largest increases in recent MCPS history. It was on like Donkey Kong!
Two things to know about TT. 1. He doesn’t like broccoli. 2. He does like money.
Elrich Backed up the Family
In his FY26 recommended budget, County Executive Marc Elrich gave MCPS nearly everything it wanted, an act of generosity praised by MCEA. Elrich is despised by most of the council but an executive’s budget is still a powerful document. Undoing large pieces of it means unraveling other parts of the budget, including revenue recommendations, so most councils only tweak it at the edges. The family was halfway to success.
MCEA was Pragmatic About Taxes
Two years ago, when Elrich proposed a 10% property tax hike to fund a budget with large increases all across county government, the teachers (and the rest of labor) insisted on every penny of it. In fact, the teachers opposed efforts by the council to reduce the tax hike. (The council ultimately approved a 4.7% increase.) The fact that the teachers not only wanted MCPS to get funded but also advocated on how it was to be funded irritated the council and limited MCEA’s political capital.
This year, MCEA was more pragmatic. Yes, they supported Elrich’s recommended increases to the property and income taxes, but they focused more on MCPS’s needs rather than on the mechanics of funding.
This approach turned out to matter a lot. All along, the budget was getting squeezed like a balloon. The council did not want to raise taxes. The council did not want to go too far below MCPS’s request. And the council did not identify many alterations to the county government’s side of the budget. As the balloon got squeezed tighter, the part that bulged out was retiree health money (OPEB). It was the path of least resistance and offered a way out – at least for now.
The MCEA of two years ago would have reiterated its cry for tax hikes. The MCEA of today took the win. The family got its money; the details were the county government’s problem.
MCEA supplied the muscle but this win would not have happened without Taylor’s alliance-building. Taylor is now drawing comparisons to Weast, who ruled the MCPS empire from 1999 through 2011. The two have different styles. Weast relied on ruthless intimidation to cow anyone foolish enough to defy him. Taylor instead relies on fun videos, dad jokes, emojis and a kind of earnestness more common to Midwesterners than a MoCo native like TT. But the two share a strategic understanding of the importance of keeping their families united on the goals of getting money and burnishing the system’s credibility. So far, Taylor’s approach seems to be working.
That said, there is a limit. Weast met his match in the Great Recession, which shut down his ability to extract money from the county. Will the oncoming Trump Recession master Taylor, or can his family keep getting wins?