The Montgomery County Council can fund its school system below state requirements, Maryland school officials ruled Wednesday, denying a petition from the county’s school board that has aggressively fought the cuts. The school board had asked the state in March to reaffirm the “maintenance of effort” rule, which compels counties to keep or increase the amount of per-pupil spending for the school system each year.
County Executive Ike Leggett and the county council had repeatedly said Montgomery, facing a $300 million shortfall, could not meet the schools’ request for an additional $82 million.
The county had said they would make the spending cuts without seeking a waiver to do so from the state. That prompted the school board’s petition to the state.
In that petition, school officials asked the state to force the county to apply for a waiver, and to rule that the county council could not reduce the schools’ budget below a budget proposed by Leggett that would make less draconian cuts. Several council members saw the petition as a precursor to a lawsuit.
The Maryland school board upheld the state’s “maintenance of effort” funding law. But at the same time, the board acknowledged that the county could ignore the law with impunity this year because the General Assembly “carved out FY 2012 as a penalty free year.”
Because counties won’t be penalized for funding below the requirement until 2013, they can hit the reset button and establish a lower school budget level to be the baseline in coming years. “It is not a coincidence that every one of the six counties that applied for a waiver this year has withdrawn its request,” the state said in its ruling.
An incensed Montgomery school board President Christopher Barclay asked, “How can the Maryland State Board of Education say that maintenance of effort funding for schools is required but provide no remedy … to be able to enforce it?”
Barclay said he planned to “turn to the General Assembly now to clear up the ambiguities of the law.”
Valerie Ervin, president of the county council, said the decision confirms the council’s “authority” over the schools budget.
Montgomery can now fund the schools “in a way that will not starve the rest of county government,” she said.
