Under a hiring freeze announced Monday, only select Montgomery County Public Schools’ vacant teaching positions will be filled for the rest of the school year.
In a seven-page memo sent to the Board of Education and staff members, Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said that vacant regular teaching positions will be filled by long-term substitutes and that all other vacancies — excluding “essential” administrative staff, bus operators, principals and special education instructors — will be frozen unless otherwise approved.
In addition, there are to be no purchases of “nonessential” supplies and materials except for textbooks, instructional materials and some building and vehicle maintenance supplies.
Weast said the move was necessary to help defray a $400 million budget shortfall for fiscal 2009 that County Executive Ike Leggett began issuing warnings about two weeks ago.
Leggett has asked all county agencies to cut expenditures by at least 2 percent this year. That would mean, at a minimum, a $37 million cut in the school system’s spending, Weast said.
With more than 20,000 employees — about half of whom are teachers — approximately 90 percent of the school system’s $1.85 billion operating budget consists of salaries and employee benefits.
“If we can save money, that’s where we will save the majority of it,” Weast said after Leggett called for more belt tightening in his “State of the County” speech Monday.
School budget planners said they would not have an estimate of how much money the freezes would yield until January.
“You have to remember it’s the middle of the year already, so that makes it more complicated.” Marshall Spatz, director of the department of management, budget and planning, said Monday.
The announcement did not surprise school or union officials.
“It’s unfortunate and it obviously has an impact on the quality of instruction,” Tom Israel, executive director of the county’s Education Association, the union representing teachers, said Monday.
School board member Pat O’Neill said her “first priorities” were to ensure that children would continue to receive quality education.
“We’re a people-heavy business,” O’Neill said. “You can’t have a classroom without a teacher. You can’t run buses without bus drivers.”
