Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, who campaigned on a platform of cutting portable classroom use, now is recommending delaying the five-year trailer-reduction plan by at least a year.
Leggett, in making his construction budget recommendations Thursday, said he is not confident in the soundness of the current plans to decrease portable-classroom dependence by half by 2012. Montgomery currently uses 719 portables, the most used by any county in the state.
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That’s why he’s suggesting the county spend almost $2 million in fiscal 2008 to devise a better plan and, in turn, wait to physically take away the trailer classrooms until 2009 or later.
“I’m not sure the plans are as well as they should be,” he told The Examiner. “I have a lot of questions about school enrollment going down. … The cost for us of going forward is a huge, huge cost, so I want more time to evaluate that.”
Leggett said he still wants to reduce the total portable classroom tally by 2012, but at a dramatically different pace — slower in the beginning and faster as 2012 approaches.
In a memo from Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Jerry Weast to the Board of Education regarding the announcement, Weast said his staff is in the midst of evaluating what the expectation is for the nearly $2 million for planning.
“MCPS staff has already developed its plan to reduce portable classrooms, thus our staff needs further clarification from the executive’s staff before I can respond to this recommendation,” he writes in the memo.
Another major reason for holdingoff on portable-classroom reductions, Leggett said, is that he wants to see how much funding Maryland Gov.-elect Martin O’Malley will provide for Montgomery County. Depending on the allocation, the county executive said he could go back and restrategize.
“O’Malley is being very cautious to what he will give out, so I want to wait until that time,” Leggett said. “We’re counting on some state money.”
As it is, the upcoming capital budget must be approved by the County Council.
According to Public Information Officer Esther Bowing, Leggett’s recommended fiscal 2008 capital budget figure of $657.4 million has to be submitted to the council by Jan. 15. That body then has until June 30 — the day before the start of fiscal 2008 — to make a ruling.
