MCPS is known for its high-quality programs, elite staff and top students. The many components of a functioning school system require enough funding to make them possible, which is designated by the Board of Education (BOE). Julie Yang, President of the BOE and former member of its fiscal management committee helps shape the board’s annual budget proposal to the Montgomery County Council (MCC).
“The BOE has the responsibility to develop a budget for the school system, but the board does not do it in isolation; we develop the budget with a proposal from the superintendent,” Yang said. “The superintendent and board also hold public hearings to get community feedback on how the previous year went and what programs need to be fixed or removed. We put these things together to propose our budget to the MCC, which is the political body that funds our budget and they might grant the amount or say they are not able to fund everything.”
On Oct. 22, 2024, it was revealed that MCPS lost $39.3 million in state funding during the Charles W. Woodward High School renovation project, which planned to completely re-do the school’s entire building. In his letter addressing the public on the matter, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor said the loss was due to “an error in the submission for aid”. Yang revealed that the money was not completely lost, but can no longer be used for the Woodward project.
“There are two separate budgets the board has access to, one is an operational budget and the other is a capital improvement budget,” Yang said. “The operational budget is to pay for salaries, bus transportation, et cetera. The capital improvement budget is for big-ticket items such as building a new school, school additions or changing AC [HVAC] systems. The $39 million error happened in the capital budget. I have to say that we have not lost this money, but we are not able to utilize it for this project at the moment. It can be used for other future projects [as it says in the state fund].”
There is something called prevailing wages, the basic wage workers are paid on public projects. MCC offered MCPS a $39 million reward if they met the prevailing wage for the Woodward project, however, there were errors when calculating the necessary wage, so MCPS did not meet the wage requirement and lost access to the reward.
“What happened with the Woodward project is that because of budget constraints during the pandemic, there were huge inflationary issues and labor cost increases, with the cost of our projects going up 20 to 25%, which was unheard of,” former Vice President and head of the BOE fiscal management committee, Lynn Harris, said. “We had to split up and stall projects because we could not afford to pay for them as originally planned. When we broke them down into segments, we were initially told we could split projects into ones with non-prevailing wages and ones with prevailing wages. However, later on, the State Department of Labor said we could not do that.”
Although construction on Woodward High School is ongoing, the building is being used to house Northwood High School students while their school is being rebuilt. MCPS worked directly with the interagency commission on school construction, which Harris felt underfunded MCPS construction projects because the commission disagreed with how the BOE designed and built schools.
”Well, it is a little frustrating to me because I remember having conversations very directly with our dean facilities team around these capital projects,” Harris said. “The county council passed the ‘Bill to Learn Act,’ which was going to give MCPS additional money for our capital projects. We also looked at the state formula that came from the MCC and bidding projects using prevailing wage versus non-prevailing wage, and when you bid a project using prevailing wage, it enhanced the availability for a state share of money for your projects.”
After owning up to the mistake, the BOE has set several procedures to ensure a mistake as large as $39 million does not happen again. To try to make up for the loss, Taylor proposed an offer to redesignate excess money left over from other projects, such as the Westbrook Elementary School project, the Parkland Middle School project, the Takoma Park Middle School project and the William Tyler Page Elementary School project, totaling $17.7 million. The BOE was able to scrape together $22 million, instead of the original $39 million.
“Back 10 years ago, when we bid Capital projects, we never assumed a portion of state funding,” Harris said. “We had a good reputation for managing our projects well, bringing them in on time [and they were] almost always under budget. When our projects were completed we would fill out all the necessary paperwork with the state agency and they would reimburse us for whatever they felt was the appropriate amount based on the type of wages we used. We should have never assumed that this time.”
