A School Budget Era May Be Over

Fiscal Downturn Curbs Increases In Montgomery

The budget for Montgomery County's public schools has doubled in 10 years, a massive investment in smaller classes, better-paid teachers and specialized programs to serve growing ranks of low-income and immigrant children.

That era might be coming to an end. The County Council will adopt an education budget this month that provides the smallest year-to-year increase in a decade for public schools. County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) has recommended trimming $51 million from the $2.11 billion spending plan submitted by the Board of Education.

County leaders say the budget can no longer keep up with the spending pace of Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, who has overseen a billion-dollar expansion since his arrival in 1999. Weast has reduced elementary class sizes, expanded preschool and kindergarten programs and invested heavily in the high-poverty area of the county known around his office as the Red Zone.

"Laudable goals, objectives, nobody's going to argue with that," Leggett said in a recent interview at his Rockville office. "But is it affordable?"

It's a question being asked of every department in a county whose overall budget has swelled from $2.1 billion in fiscal 1998 to $4.3 billion this year, a growth rate Leggett terms "unacceptable."

Up to now, the mounting cost of Montgomery County education has not posed much of a problem. The suburban county is largely defined by its superior public schools. Over the past 10 years, a time of virtually unfettered real estate growth and rising test scores, the County Council has approved annual spending increases of 7 and 8 percent with hardly a second thought.

"We could probably have a good school system for less," said Michael Knapp (D), the County Council president. "Could we have a great school system for less? I doubt it."

This year, facing an economic downturn, the school board seeks an increase of $126 million, or about 6 percent. County leaders say they cannot afford even that. Leggett recommends trimming the requested increase to $75 million. The council's education committee favors something in between: $95 million to $105 million, Knapp said.

Similar negotiations have played out this spring in Anne Arundel, Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties. Each faces a gap of at least $20 million between the amount the local school board says it needs in the coming school year and the sum county leaders say they are willing to spend.

Montgomery County is coping with an almost $300 million shortfall in the current budget year. To make ends meet next year, Leggett proposes raising property taxes by an average 8 percent, the largest increase since the Reagan administration.

Rank-and-file parents are being mobilized to lobby the council for full funding. One recent e-mail blast to parents at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda advertised a three-day call-a-thon: "[M]ake the point that you are calling during Teacher Appreciation Week and let the council know that honoring [teacher] contracts is important to you."

Among community activists, the school budget is a target of increasing criticism. One County Council candidate captured the mood recently by circulating a chart, obtained via a public information request, that shows 1,097 of the 20,844 school-system employees earning more than $100,000.