Wednesday, December 14, 2016
6:00 - 7:30 pm
1st Floor Meeting Room
6:00 - 7:30 pm
1st Floor Meeting Room
Rockville Public Library
21 Maryland
Avenue
Rockville, MD
20850
PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME AND VENUE
Free and open to the public
Topic: " The FY 2018 Proposed Budget for the Montgomery County Public Schools"
Speaker: Dr. Jack Smith, Superintendent, Montgomery County Public Schools
The following questions have been sent to Dr. Smith in advance of the meeting
1.
What are the costs related to the top three academic strategies -
Achievement Gap, 21st Century Education and Special Education for FY
2018. What percentage of increased spending is for these 3 strategies?
2.
Data from prior superintendents and reports by the Council's Office of
Legislative Oversight
(OLO) show that MCPS has expended an additional $2,000 per student
annually in "targeted" elementary schools to reduce class size and
provide supports to low-income learners. However the achievement gap by
student race, ethnicity and income continues to persist and has widened
on several measures of college readiness, such as SAT and ACT
performance. How many schools did not meet district-wide performance
targets? Have you set improvement goals for these schools for FY 2018?
As you have highlighted narrowing the achievement gap as a major goal, would you consider sponsoring an independent review by outside
specialists of gap closing strategies to determine which approaches are
cost-effective - with a report to the public?
3. Will you consider charter schools as a means of closing the achievement gap? A review of Baltimore schools in Freddy
Gray’s Sandtown neighborhood showed a charter school (Empowerment Academy) not
only out-performed his public school (New Song), but out-performed two
elementary (Greencastle and Strathmore) and two middle schools with high FARMS rates in Montgomery County - Benjamin
Bannecker and Argyle. (see 5/18/15 study
posted on MCTL web site).
4. Will you use Department of Education standards to decide if there
is reasonable evidence to deploy a program countywide. For instance
have the Choice Program and the Middle School Magnet Consortium met
their performance goals? If yes, will they be expanded? Will you
reprogram funds if goals for these and other programs are are
not reached?
5. Are performance target improvements planned for special education students in
FY 2018 separate from the at risk population at large? How do the marginal costs to achieve these improvements compare to
the marginal costs for at risk students in the general student population for
the same measures?
6.
Given that the mandated Maintenance of Effort law may not be able to
cover both the program needs of our school children and the salaries and
benefits of staff which account for 90 percent of the MCPS budget, will
you rein in labor contracts so that teacher's salaries and benefits match more
reasonably with their counterparts in Howard and Fairfax counties?
7.
How does your FY 2018 budget manage non-instruction overhead ? Have
you considered benchmarking this against other school systems? For
example, the overhead rate at large school districts in California
average 32%. For MCPS it was 45% in FY 2017. Lowering this overhead
could result in the hiring of thousands more teachers to lower class
size and narrow the achievement gap. Will you use the expertise of the
business community to advise on administrative costs? Will you consider
consolidating administrative functions with those of the Montgomery
County government.
8.
Language immersion programs are very popular and wildly
over-subscribed. To open the program to a larger school audience, have
you considered innovative solutions such as partnering with universities
that provide video classroom learning in a wide range of languages.
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