Report raises questions about spending at Montgomery County Public Schools
by Kellye Lynn
Tue, November 25, 2025 at 6:01 AM
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (7News) — A new inspector general report shows Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) failed to get school board approval for more than a million dollars in payments to various vendors.
The review comes just three months after 7News told you thousands of MCPS employees had outdated criminal history checks.
The Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General conducted a review of the school system's procurement process. The report focused on fiscal years 2023 and 2024.
It found the Division of Procurement, which purchases supplies and equipment for MCPS, failed to follow laws, regulations and procedures for expenditures.
For instance, the school system is required to get Board of Education approval for purchases over $25,000, but in several cases, that didn't happen...
“We just saw the State Board of Education determine that the electric school bus bid award was made illegally. How many illegal things are we going to have before there's some prosecution or action?” Janis Sartucci said.
Are they going to pay it back with interest and penalty?
ReplyDeleteIn the actual county report, this is out of 32 randomly selected transactions derived from a larger group of criteria driven orders. Seven suppliers out of 32 orders were overpaid and 2 employees paid as contractors. It shows there were over 62,000 transactions. The findings were a review of only 32 transactions. They will need a full time board just to approve the payments over $25,000 with a 300 million budget. Whey couldn't they find the records? Why were they searching for purchases at $1,500? One laptop can cost that much. Why didn't they look at the bidding process? Is price a considered? Schools are already struggling to get the supplies they need. If I and other parents didn't donate items to the classroom, they would barely have anything. The sample was about 0.052%. This seems like a waste of time report. How much did it cost the county to review 32 transactions?
ReplyDeleteIt's called an audit. Is your comment that you don't support audits?
DeleteNo full-time Board is needed. What is needed is a transparent process. In the last few months the Board of Education eliminated 1/2 of their Business meetings. That means it will be that much harder for the public to track MCPS spending. That was a choice that the current Board of Education made to limit transparency.
This audit showed how easy it is for MCPS to waste education dollars.
You say classrooms barely have anything. Why do you think that is? Administrators have everything they need and in fact get logo clothing and other perks at their monthly meetings, all paid for from the MCPS education funding. How does it happen that administrators get what they want but classrooms don't?