Wed 12/14: Superintendent Jack Smith to Speak at Taxpayers' League

Meeting Notice       

www.mctaxpayersleague.org

                         Wednesday, December 14, 2016
   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.