The county councils in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties will spend the coming week slicing millions of dollars from their already bare-bones budgets, but little will be coming from the schools.
Economic troubles plaguing Montgomery and Prince George’s counties:
Montgomery County
Denied waiver request from the State Department of Education: $80 million
County’s proposed allocation to the school system: $1.5 billion
Estimated budget shortfall for fiscal 2010: more than $600 million
Unemployment (March 2009): 5 percent
Home sales: down 18 percent in 2008
Prince George’s County
Denied waiver request from the State Department of Education: $24 million
County’s proposed allocation to the school system: $505 million
Expected revenue shortfall for fiscal 2010: $48 million
Expected general fund fiscal gap for fiscal 2010: $113 million
Unemployment (March 2009): 7 percent
Housing median price for 2008: $300,000 (2009: $220,000)
A surprise decision by the Maryland State Department of Education denied the counties’ requests to skimp slightly on their required school funding due to the recession. The denial leaves Montgomery with about $80 million to cut from other agencies, and Prince George’s with about $24 million.
“We’re going to have to look at a wide variety of spending reductions, hardly any of which can come from the schools at this point — we’re very constricted in terms of that,” said Montgomery Council President Phil Andrews.
In Maryland, districts are required to share public school funding with the state. According to the logic of the law, the state should not bear the burden of paying for schools if the county skirts its responsibility to fund them according to an agreed-on formula.
But a stipulation exists for extraordinary circumstances. And this year, the counties looked at their budgets and saw extraordinary shortfalls.
“The state board uses as a standard that the county’s fiscal conditions must be ‘significantly impeded,’ ” Andrews said. “And I don’t see how any reasonable person cannot see that the current economy is not a significant impediment to our ability to fund this budget.”
The state board of education disagreed.
“We note that the recession impacts all counties in Maryland and that 21 of the 24 counties have not requested a waiver” of the funds, the board’s written opinion said. Wicomico County also was denied the request.
The board said none of the three counties had economic issues
out of proportion with the rest of the state. Granting the waiver
could have set a bad precedent, it said.
“Any crumbling in the cornerstone of the state/local share formula for funding education can affect the structural soundness … going forward,” the opinion said.
The decision came as a particular surprise in Montgomery County, where the school board had supported the county’s request for a waiver. In Prince George’s, however, the school board opposed it, and Friday’s denial came as qualified good news.
“It’s good news for the school system — we’ve cut, cut, cut already,” said Prince George’s board member Donna Hathaway Beck. “But it’s clearly distracting and disappointing for the county.”
