Tag Archives: school construction

Adam Pagnucco, Baltimore City, Corporate Welfare, COVID-19, Development, Economy, Ike Leggett, Marc Elrich, MCEA, MCPS, police

The Top Twenty Seventh State Posts of 2020, Part One

By Adam Pagnucco.

The year 2020 was hugely eventful for the entire world and MoCo was no exception. In our county, 2020 saw a public health crisis, a resulting economic crash and huge challenges to our quality of life. In political terms, it also saw unusually contentious elections for school board and circuit court judge, four historic ballot questions and numerous fights inside county government. We wrote about it all on Seventh State. Here are the top twenty posts measured by page views from the people who count the most – YOU, our readers.

  1. Miscreants Run Wild at Elrich Press Conference

This was a poorly organized public event gone wrong, culminating with an unmasked protestor getting within spitting distance of the county executive. For those who question the need for the executive to have a security detail, this is Exhibit A for why it can be necessary.

  1. Elrich Vetoes WMATA Property Tax Bill

County Executive Marc Elrich’s first veto, this one targeting a council-passed bill giving Metro station developers 15-year property tax breaks, set off a fight on corporate welfare that has not ended by a long shot. That will prove especially true if a proposal by the planning staff to grant tax abatements to other properties near Metro stations advances.

  1. The Squeaky Wheel and Inequities Hiding in Plain Sight

MoCo PTA Vice-President Laura Stewart wrote this guest blog on inequities in MCPS’s capital budget. It’s a must-read for everyone who cares about school construction.

  1. Will MCPS Reopen?

In early November, MCPS told the public that it was planning a phased-in reopening of schools for some in-person instruction. But the winter surge of COVID quickly overtook that plan and cast the timing of reopening in doubt. The issue is still unsettled.

  1. MCEA: MCPS Reopening Plan “Wholly Inadequate” to Protect Students and Staff

Back in the summer, MCPS’s original reopening plan was drenched in controversy, ultimately resulting in a pitched battle with the county teachers’ union (MCEA). MCPS wound up going with virtual learning for the fall, like most other large school systems in the region, but the mechanics and safety of reopening are still subjects of debate.

  1. What Happened to White Flint?

Jobs, jobs, JOBS. According to White Flint developers, MoCo’s slow rate of job growth was one reason that they could not get financing to proceed on the county’s preeminent development plan. The chart below says it all. And when the COVID pandemic finally ends, county leaders must dedicate themselves to creating jobs, Jobs, JOBS or MoCo’s stagnation will continue.

  1. Baltimore City’s Election Has a Problem

Back in June, incumbent Baltimore City Council Member Zeke Cohen, who had a big lead in money and endorsements over his challenger, appeared on election night to be getting just 2% of the vote. That was the first sign of a primary gone wrong, which led to many misgivings about the state’s processes with mail ballots and the performance of its long-time election administrator Linda Lamone.

  1. Why Montgomery County Ballot Questions B and D Are Truly Bad Ideas You Should Vote Against

2020 was a year of surprises, and one of the bigger surprises was the emergence from political retirement of former County Executive Ike Leggett. Question B (Robin Ficker’s latest anti-tax charter amendment) and Question D (nine council districts) disturbed Leggett enough that he started a ballot issue committee to defeat them. This post was Leggett’s guest column on why they were bad ideas and it got a big reaction from our readers.

  1. Teachers Respond to Lynne Harris

After school board candidate Lynne Harris blamed MCEA for allegedly resisting school reopening (a post that also appears on our top 20 list), a group of rank-and-file teachers pushed back in this guest post. It achieved wide readership that was probably concentrated among teachers as the general election approached.

  1. Free-For-All

In non-COVID news, 2020 was the year that the county’s police department (along with departments around the country) became a political football. This post describes how the executive, the county council and Annapolis all jumped into the issue of policing with little coordination. Lost in the debate was the central fact that crime in MoCo is at its lowest level in decades. Policing will continue to be a hot topic in 2021.

Tomorrow we will list the top ten Seventh State posts for the year!

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Adam Pagnucco, Montgomery County Council

Nine Districts Blasts Council on South Lake Elementary School

By Adam Pagnucco.

Nine Districts for MoCo, the group that put a charter amendment on the ballot converting the county council to a nine district structure, has released a video blasting the council for its decision to delay completion of a new building for South Lake Elementary School. The school, located in Gaithersburg, was the subject of a WTOP article describing heat and air conditioning problems, crowding and rodents running free inside the building. Community members have asked for a new school for years and MCPS has described the building’s problems as “insurmountable.” MCPS requested funding for a new building, which the council approved, but the council delayed completion by one year to September 2024 due to fiscal problems. The school board has since asked the council to restore the project’s original schedule but that won’t happen unless money can be found.

The video accurately notes that the school’s student body is overwhelmingly black and brown. However, its claim that the at-large council members “voted unanimously to take South Lake Elementary school out of the $14B capital improvement budget” is inaccurate. The council voted to delay the project, not delete it. It remains in the capital budget with a projected cost of $34.9 million. This is not the first time Nine Districts for MoCo has released a misleading video.

This claim is inaccurate.

The video was posted on YouTube by Reardon Sullivan, a member of the county Republican Party’s central committee. Republicans support the nine district group because they believe such a structure might lead to a Republican county council seat.

The video appears below.

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Confederate Monuments, Montgomery County Council, Montgomery County Public Schools, schools

Top Seventh State Stories, August 2020

By Adam Pagnucco.

These were the top stories on Seventh State in August ranked by page views.

1. The Squeaky Wheel and Inequities Hiding in Plain Sight
2. Is Talbot County Killing its Golden Goose?
3. Revealed! Funders of Nine Districts
4. Hogan Overturns MoCo Closure of Private Schools
5. MoCo Shuts Down Private Schools – Again
6. Volcano in Rockville
7. Two Districts vs Nine Districts
8. Council Drops Poison Pill on Nine Districts
9. Is the Council Violating the Open Meetings Act?
10. Friedson Asks for Answers on Private School Shutdown

Congratulations to MoCo PTA Vice-President Laura Stewart on writing our top post of the month! Laura’s excellent analysis of school construction geography was widely seen and provoked questions about county capital project decision making. Our Talbot County post saw lots of circulation and commentary on the Eastern Shore. The two major stories of Nine Districts and private school reopenings accounted for most of the rest of our top August posts. Keep reading and we’ll keep writing!

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Adam Pagnucco, budget, Economy, MCPS

MoCo’s Moratorium Madness

By Adam Pagnucco.

The Montgomery County government is currently plagued by a $100 million operating budget shortfall and a shrinking capital budget.  So what is the county doing to revitalize its economy and earn more revenue?

Potentially, imposing more moratoriums on housing construction!

County development rules require moratoriums on housing construction inside school clusters or individual school service areas when projected public school enrollment accounts for 120% or more of capacity five years into the future.  Additionally, elementary schools must be 110 students over capacity and middle schools must be 180 students over capacity to trigger moratoriums.  Projects that are already approved are not halted by moratoriums but new project approvals are not granted.

Last year, the county imposed moratoriums on four high school clusters and 13 individual elementary school service areas.  Those areas accounted for roughly 12% of the county and included high-profile markets in Downtown Silver Spring and North Bethesda, thereby directly thwarting the county’s transit-oriented development strategy.

The problem with stopping residential development is that school impact taxes collected from new units can be a major source of revenue for school construction.  As recently as the FY15-20 amended capital budget, school impact taxes accounted for 15% of MCPS’s school construction budget.  Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

In a memo to the Montgomery County Planning Board, planning staff noted that the county executive’s new recommended FY21-26 capital budget underfunds MCPS’s construction request by $61 million in FY21, $93 million in FY22, $93 million in FY23 and $57 million in FY24.  One of the biggest reasons for the underfunding is that school impact tax receipts have fallen by more than half since FY14.  The planning staff indicates that if the underfunding results in delayed projects, nine elementary school service areas (Bethesda, Clarksburg, JoAnn Leleck, Rachel Carson, Strawberry Knoll, Summit Hall, McNair, Page and Burnt Mills), one middle school service area (Parkland) and seven high school clusters (Quince Orchard, Richard Montgomery, Albert Einstein, Montgomery Blair, Blake, Northwood, Walter Johnson) may be at risk of moratoriums.  For the Blake, Blair, Einstein and Walter Johnson clusters, this would be the second straight year of moratorium, threatening projects in North Bethesda and Downtown Silver Spring.

The cruel fact here is that reducing residential construction has historically had little if any impact on MCPS enrollment increases.  The chart below shows MCPS enrollment (red line and left axis) and residential units permitted in Montgomery County (blue line and right axis) from 1994 through 2018.  MCPS enrollment comes from the county executive’s recommended budget while permitted units comes from the U.S. Census Bureau.  Over this 24 year period, housing construction has been falling while MCPS enrollment has been rising.  The contrast between the two trends has been most pronounced in recent years.  Housing units permitted has fallen from 3,981 in 2012 to 1,947 in 2018 while MCPS enrollment has grown from 146,497 to 161,470.  It defies logic to blame school crowding on housing construction when homebuilding is in an era of decline.

And so here is the effect of MoCo’s moratorium policy.  Housing construction drops, causing school impact tax payments to plummet and depriving school construction of needed funding.  The county reacts by delaying school projects, triggering moratoriums.  That causes housing construction to decline further and the cycle continues.  None of this helps more schools get built but it definitely constrains housing supply, thereby driving up home prices and making the county even more unaffordable to live in than it already is.  Another effect is that it makes the county radioactive to the real estate and investment communities, thereby pushing them into competing jurisdictions.  It’s no wonder that Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks is celebrating her county’s passing of Montgomery County in job creation.

Using residential moratoriums to prevent school crowding is like treating lung cancer by amputating the patient’s legs.  The treatment does nothing to solve the original problem but it definitely causes new problems to arise!

If you wanted to stop economic growth and make it harder for people to live here, it would be difficult to devise something more attuned to such goals than MoCo’s insane moratorium policy.  The county must bring it to an end.

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budget, MCPS, schools

Placeholders, Indeed, Do Have a Place in the MCPS Capital Budget

By Glenn Orlin.

In a recent piece in Seventh State it was argued that so-called “placeholder” projects have no place in the Montgomery County Public Schools capital program. But there are very good reasons why the County Council has done exactly that for the past eight years.

First, some background.  The Subdivision Staging Policy (SSP) Public School Adequacy Test compares enrollment five years in advance—at each cluster and level (HS, MS, or ES), and at each school—against the budgeted capacity at each cluster/level and school five school years hence.  If the future enrollment exceeds the future capacity in a cluster by more than 20% at any level, then the cluster goes into a housing moratorium; that is, no more housing subdivisions can be approved until the capacity standard is met.  (Relocatable classrooms are not counted towards “capacity” under the School Adequacy Test.) If the future enrollment exceeds the future capacity in a MS service area by more than 20% and 180 students, then that MS service area goes into a housing moratorium.  If the future enrollment exceeds the future capacity in an ES service area by more than 20% and 110 students, then that ES service area goes into a housing moratorium.  The five-year rule was selected many years ago because, on average, that is how long it takes for a housing subdivision approval to morph into occupied housing units, many of them having kids of school age.

At the start of this decade the Council began the practice of budgeting generic “Solution” (i.e., placeholder) CIP projects in certain circumstances.  The rationale is that while a cluster or school service area might have enrollment that exceeds the moratorium threshold, in many cases MCPS is concurrently planning for a new school or addition that would provide sufficient capacity in time to avoid such a moratorium.  The Council has approved Solution projects only when all the following conditions are met:

  1. A cluster or school service area is projected to exceed the moratorium threshold;
  2. MCPS is concurrently—or about to start—planning for a capital project that would address the potential moratorium; and
  3. MCPS’s normal schedule for planning, design, and construction would have the project’s added capacity opening by the start of the school year five years hence.

The most recent application of the School Test was approved by the Planning Board on June 22, 2017.  The Board placed seven ES service areas into moratorium: Burnt Mills, Highland View, Kemp Mill, Lake Seneca, Rosemont, Strawberry Knoll, and Summit Hall.  At that time, while all of them met Condition #1, none of them met Conditions #2 and #3.  Eight other clusters or school service areas were not placed into moratorium because Solution projects were justifiable and programmed: they met all three conditions.  In the FY19-24 CIP several of these Solution projects will be replaced by specific projects that the Board of Education (BOE) is now officially ready to recommend.  This new CIP will include only four Solution projects.

It is important to note that the decision to budget a Solution project for a school has nothing to do with whether there are new housing applications in that area awaiting the Planning Board’s approval.  Condition #1 occurs either when projected enrollment growth due to turnover, already approved new housing, or both, will be over the capacity threshold.  Whether there are impending housing development applications simply doesn’t matter in the decision to budget a Solution project or not.  Now let’s turn to the examples raised in the earlier Seventh State piece.

Bethesda ES and Somerset ES.  The service areas for both schools in the B-CC Cluster are projected to be well over capacity (+25% and +27%, respectively) in five years, that is, by the start of the 2023-24 school year.  MCPS is initiating an elementary school capacity study for the B-CC Cluster, which would examine a range of options.  The study will be conducted during the 2018-2019 school year.  The Board of Education (BOE) will then be in position to propose a specific project in its FY21-26 CIP request; if that project’s funding were to begin in FY21, then, following the normal schedule for planning, design, and construction it could open at the start of the 2023-24 school year.  Because all three conditions are met—a projected moratorium, planning about to begin, and a path to project completion in five years—the Council is poised to fund Solution projects for Bethesda ES and Somerset ES.  The total amount to be budgeted for these two Solution projects is about $6.4 million.  When a specific project is ready to be budgeted, this $6.4 million will be used to help fund it.

Judith A. Resnik ES.  The current CIP has a fully funded addition at this Magruder Cluster school (which would bring its capacity up to 740), but the BOE deleted the construction funding in its request for the FY19-24 CIP.  Enrollment is trending downward, although in five years it is still projected to exceed the moratorium standard if there is no addition.  The BOE is continuing planning for an addition, however.  So, since all three of the above conditions are met, the Council is planning to fund a $2.7 million Solution project for Resnik ES.

The fourth Solution project is about $6.3 million for Einstein HS, which the Council had already initiated, and the BOE itself has recommended continuing it. Therefore, the sum of the four Solution projects is about $15.4 million.  All but $3.7 million would be programmed in the last three years of the CIP (FYs22-24).

Burnt Mills ES.  This school is projected to be 47% over capacity in 2023-24, so certainly Condition #1 is met.  However, MCPS is requesting the Council to set aside in the CIP $120 million (talk about your placeholders!) while it undertakes a thorough review of the prior revitalization/expansion program “in order to develop a multi-variable approach to determine the priority order of large-scale renovations, possibly including programmatic and capacity considerations” (Superintendent’s FY19 CIP Request, page 1-2).  Therefore, the Burnt Mills situation meets neither Condition #2 nor #3.  Once the BOE has determined a strategy for this school, its improvement would either be partially funded as a Solution project or fully funded from the outset.

Ashburton ES.  If the argument is being made that Solution projects are budgeted to meet the desires of new development, then consider the case of Ashburton in the Walter Johnson Cluster.  It is projected to be more than 22% over capacity five years from now, meeting Condition #1.  Just last fall the Council approved the Rock Spring Master Plan which allows for at least 2,300 more housing units than exists or is already approved.  Almost all the Rock Spring area is within the Ashburton ES service area.  Nevertheless, since MCPS is not undertaking planning for additional capacity that would further relieve Ashburton, its service area will go into a housing moratorium in July.

E. Brooke Lee MS Addition. When the Council approves the CIP, it assures that there is enough money to pay for the projects it is budgeting in each of the CIP’s six years.  The Council is approving a tighter CIP this year than in the past, because it recognizes that debt service on borrowing has grown too high.  (Debt service is an obligation that must be paid before anything else in the budget, including salaries.)  Earlier this year the Council asked for the Superintendent to provide it with a list of “non-recommended” projects that would be the first choices to be reduced or deferred, should the Council need them to meet the spending limits.

One of the projects on his list was to delay the construction funding for Lee MS by one year, although not to delay the first-year (FY19) design funds, which would allow the opportunity for the project to be reaccelerated next year.  In its worksession on April 17, several members of the Council expressed the desire to delay neither the design nor the construction funds for the Lee MS project.  To accommodate this desire, there is a shortfall of $8 million in FY20 and $9.5 million in FY21 for which funds must be found.  We will do our best to do that, but deleting the Solution projects would contribute nearly nothing to this effort; there is only $169,000 in Solution project funds in FY20, and only $3.6 million in FY21; the remaining $11.7 million is in FY22 and later.

Do Solution projects almost never get done in five years, as the Seventh State article claims?  In fact, almost every project does get done within five years, or, the BOE later decides that the project isn’t needed after all.   In the article, it is stated that most of the Solution projects added in FY15 did not translate into actual projects within five years, which would have been the 2019-2020 school year.  For FY15 the Council added Solution projects for five Downcounty Consortium elementary schools: Brookhaven, Glen Haven, Highland, Kemp Mill, and Sargent Shriver.  Two years later, however, the BOE retracted its request for these projects, noting that the projected seat deficits were no longer high enough for it to request funds for additions there (see the FY17 Educational Facilities Master Plan, pages 4-37 through 4-41).

Is “real money” being taken out of the MCPS for Solution projects?  In a word, no.  The Council never budgets all the money it could in the CIP.  This is because the Council needs to reserve funds for: (1) when construction bids come in over estimates; (2) for when projects that are in the planning stage are ready for construction funding later in the CIP period; and (3) for unanticipated opportunities or emergencies that arise.  For these reasons, the Council this year will probably set aside a capital reserve of about 9% of the funds available for budgeting, as has been recommended by the County Executive.  But, after all, a Solution project is but a designated reserve, so the Council—as it has in the past—will likely set an undesignated capital reserve less than the Executive recommended by the $15.4 million in these Solution projects.  Therefore, the Solution projects do not compete with other projects in the MCPS CIP, nor with those in the County Government, Montgomery College, or Park & Planning CIPs.  If anything, the Solution projects provide a first claim on the capital reserve.

In summary, Solution projects in the CIP in no way compete with other projects, and they avoid housing moratoria in certain situations where they are not warranted.

Glenn Orlin is the Deputy Director of the Office of the County Council.  He has been the Council’s CIP Coordinator for the last 26 years.

 

 

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budget, MCPS

Placeholders Have No Place in the MCPS Capital Budget

By Laura Stewart.

Have you ever heard of the term “placeholder” in the county budget? I never had, until as a PTA President, I started to advocate for an elementary school that had 9 portables. The terminology surrounding placeholders was confusing.  At first it sounded like a planning tool that might be helpful.  But as I have looked at the scenarios in front of us in this budget cycle, I believe that real solutions need to take place instead of placeholders.  I will explain by using two real life scenarios below, followed by a review of the consequences of the current County Council’s SSP (Subdivision Staging Policy.)

Scenario 1:

An elementary school has just received an addition due to housing turnover, new development, and a boundary change that was intended to address split articulation patterns and crowding at other schools.  After the addition was completed, the school immediately became over-crowded again and now has four portables. More development is underway in the area, and it will cause even more crowding at the school.

Due to county policy, future development goes into moratorium when a school is forecast to be over 120% capacity at year 5 in the budget, unless there is a “solution.” That solution can be a “placeholder,” money put in the budget that covers the extra seats a development will create, based on the County’s “student generation rates.”  This money is not tied to a specific plan. It is only there to prevent the area from going into moratorium. The school system promises to develop an actual project in time for the seats to materialize in the next 5 years.  This school gets assigned a “placeholder” by the Council since a capacity project is not included in the Board of Education’s recommended FY19 budget.

Scenario 2:

A school has been over 120% capacity since 2011 and is at 151% today.  A plan to address the overcapacity is not included in the Board of Education (BOE) Recommended FY 19-24 budget.  Since there are no pending development projects in this part of the county, no “solution project” is proposed by the County Council, and the area officially goes into a housing moratorium.

Scenario 1 is in Bethesda, scenario 2 is in East Silver Spring.  Neither community is happy with place holders!

I will first explain why the areas with development aren’t happy.  The scenario 1 school, Bethesda ES, is in an area where housing development continues.  In fact, there are an additional 11 buildings submitting applications in the area under a recently approved master plan. Somerset Elementary School is in a similar situation and the Council has proposed a placeholder for that school as well. There is no actual plan for another addition at the Bethesda school (which may not even be possible, given the small site size,) or a plan for a new elementary school nearby. New schools, even at properties MCPS already owns, are much more expensive than additions. Additions also can cost more than the placeholder price tag that is included in the budget. Placeholders are supposed to guarantee seats in 5 years, but the past has shown that projects almost never get done in that time period.  Of the last five placeholders that had a due date before 2018, only one project finished by the due date. Another 4 placeholders added in FY15 were postponed the following year. Continuing development with a placeholder causes schools to go way over capacity, often much more than the initial 120% threshold, by the time there is a real solution.

Now let’s look at Scenario two.  East Silver Spring does not have pending development. The school that is the most overcrowded in the area is Burnt Mills ES, at 151% and over 200 children are in portables. In fact, this school has been over the 120% threshold since 2011, when the feasibility study was done. No project for this school is in the FY2019-2024 CIP. They will be considered in the new renovation and expansion program in a future CIP, but there are limited funds and there are many schools that will be considered. There are no guarantees for this school. So this area is now officially in moratorium, and has been for a while.  Relief at Burnt Mills seems elusive without any project on the books. Parents feel like they do not get the attention that other areas with lots of development get.  They are not wrong. Even though placeholders aren’t solutions, at least the conversation about a possible solution takes place at the County Council.

Seven areas are in housing moratorium in Montgomery County, but only three had placeholders proposed to be added in this budget cycle, two in Bethesda and one in Gaithersburg. I’ve spoken to parents in Bethesda that would rather have a building moratorium take place so the County could take time to come up with a real planned solution. The Gaithersburg school, Judith A. Resnik ES, had an addition project scheduled with a completion date. The enrollment there is trending down slightly, but is still projected to be at 122% capacity within 5 years.  To avoid a moratorium, the County removed an actual project (the scheduled addition), and added a placeholder.

Real money is taken out of the MCPS budget for placeholders, instead of actually using those funds for planned projects. In fact, several projects that were proposed in the BOE Recommended FY19 Budget are slated to be delayed due to lack of funds, including Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School. It is considered a “sick” building by many teachers and parents. Mold and other issues come up regularly. They were elated to have a project that had a completion date of September 2021, only to be deeply disappointed when they were included in the delay list. Placeholder money – used to avoid putting development in moratorium- could be allocated NOW to schools with greater needs than the areas with pending development. Placeholders compete for scarce funds in the CIP.

There is another unintended consequence of giving placeholder money to areas of higher growth. These areas tend to be more affluent. So the optics continues to perpetuate the perceived and the real divide between East County and West County. For instance, there are huge disparities in wealth in our two scenarios. Bethesda ES has a 7.3% Free and Reduced Meals Rate (FARMS.) Burnt Mills ES has 67.1% FARMS.  The affluent area gets the attention of councilmembers and solution/placeholder projects – that may or may not actually come to fruition – while poorer areas are left out. This policy also divides the County North and South too, because rural areas do not have the growth that down county areas receive.

I am in no way blaming Councilmembers or insinuating that they mean to ignore certain areas of the County. I know that many fight for scarce resources, and fight to bring economic growth in underperforming areas of the County. I am blaming the processes and policies that perpetuate inequalities and perception of inequalities in our school system. I propose changing the system.  We can come together as a community and find a better way forward. Let’s get developers, Council Members, the Board of Education, the MCPS Division of Long Range Planning, and the Planning Department together and come up with REAL solutions so we can finally build real classrooms for kids, no matter in which zip code they live.

Laura Stewart is the CIP Chair for the Montgomery County Council of PTAs.

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Adam Pagnucco, budget, MCEA, MCPS

Team MoCo

By Adam Pagnucco.

Yesterday, we wrote about the recent history of MCPS and it was not a pretty picture.  The recession, new state laws, political conflict and the erosion of a once-strong consensus around the public schools resulted in MCPS getting lower funding increases than most of the rest of county government, especially when measured in local dollars.  But the good news here is that change is coming to MoCo with the sheer number of open seats in county elected offices.  There is a better way forward.  And today, we will plot out what that way can be.

First, let’s steal a page from the playbook of former MCPS Head Coach Jerry Weast and recognize this: nothing brings folks together like a common enemy.  The Axis powers brought together America and the Soviet Union.  The New England Patriots brought together nearly all NFL fans without ties to the Greater Boston area to root for the not-quite-as-bad Philadelphia Eagles.  And Donald Trump may just bring together the feuding members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who hate Trump more than they dislike each other.

The various factions of MoCo’s education family do not have a common enemy, but they do have a common challenge: dealing with Annapolis.  The state capital poses three problems for MoCo’s public schools.  First, the state has a Governor who has cut education funding before (especially state aid for MoCo) and is doing it again.  Second, while the state has improved recently, it still short changes MoCo on school construction money and the county cannot keep up with capacity needs on its own.  And third, a consultant advising the state’s Kirwan Commission on education reform has recommended massive cuts to state operating aid to MCPS.  If all three of these things proceed in a baleful direction, MCPS’s funding issues will get a lot worse and the entire county – parents, students, school employees, residents and businesses – will pay a steep price.

When you get past the details of MCPS’s recent money problems, one root cause stands out: political division in the wake of Weast’s departure.  The County Executive, the County Council, MCPS leadership, the MCPS unions and the PTAs all have different priorities and different views on MCPS funding, and they often go in different directions.  That has to stop or things won’t change.  We need a Team MoCo.  And here’s what that looks like.

County Council

The council has one job when it comes to the schools: funding them.  And since the schools are both a critical public policy priority as well as a big political priority for the voters, their funding situation must improve from the last eight years.  The council largely got this right in its FY18 budget, which gave MCPS a modest (roughly $20 million) increase over the state’s Maintenance of Effort requirement.  The policy of regular, modest per pupil local dollar increases that will – at the very least – keep pace with MCPS’s costs and needs should continue.

The council must not get involved in sensitive internal MCPS issues, especially in pressuring the system on its collective bargaining agreements.  Blowing up the union contracts in 2016 was a major mistake and caused a serious breach of trust.  Let MCPS management and the unions decide what the agreements look like in the context of their total budget.  If the council does not stay out of this, Team MoCo will crumble and the entire arrangement will fall apart.

Superintendent and Board of Education

If the council gives MCPS leadership the funding it needs, then MCPS leadership must reciprocate by giving the council what it needs: fiscal stability.  The state’s Maintenance of Effort (MOE) law, which was rewritten in 2012, sets each year’s local dollar per pupil funding as a base for future years.  Every time the base goes up, it becomes a new base and can only be lowered by a waiver from the State Board of Education.  This is a major concern for the council and was partially responsible for several years of per pupil cuts and freezes.  Given the immense implications of this for the county’s budget and AAA bond rating, the council is right to be wary of going too far above MOE.

Fortunately, § 5-202 (d) (9) of the state’s education law specifies that the State Board of Education shall grant an MOE waiver “in the amount that has been agreed on by the county and county board that is attributable to reductions in recurring costs.”  In other words, if the county falls into another big recession and it has to cut costs in the school system along with all the other agencies, it can get a waiver if the school board agrees.  This deal must be honored by MCPS: if the council extends its trust by funding them, MCPS must agree to reciprocate by helping to relieve the county of financial stress in dire circumstances.  Both sides must stick to this or relations will revert to the bad old years.

MCPS Unions and PTAs

MCEA and SEIU Local 500 are two of the most powerful players in county politics.  The PTAs do not endorse candidates, but they have listservs that include thousands of parents and therefore – at least in theory – have a big voice.  These organizations should function as the muscle of Team MoCo.  They will be getting regular funding increases and, in return, they should help the Team pressure Annapolis to get what is needed for the county.

MoCo Delegation

If Team MoCo gets its act together and strikes an equitable deal for local funding for the schools, the remaining challenges lie in Annapolis.  Rockville does not understand Annapolis.  It does not fully appreciate the obstacles faced by the delegation in pursuing county priorities: the perception of MoCo by the rest of the state as paved in gold; the competing priorities of other population centers in the state; the constraining effect of the legislature’s leadership; and the fiscal constraints of the state’s own tight budget.  Given those hurdles, it’s a heavy lift for the delegation to bring back Big Bacon to MoCo.  But it can be done: witness the Baltimore City delegation’s victory in getting the state to pump a billion dollars into the city’s school construction program.  The city legislators are not smarter than MoCo’s legislators (although they are more parochial).  A big reason for their win was that the entire city stuck together, from the Mayor to the City Council to the city legislators to the folks back home who wanted the money.  Team Baltimore got a billion dollars.  We need a Team MoCo to do something similar.

The role of the county leadership and its constituent groups is to set a mark for the delegation and do everything possible to help them stay organized and succeed.  This is not easy; the other jurisdictions and the presiding officers won’t just roll over for us.  Every member of Team MoCo has to tell our delegation with one unified voice, “We have your backs.  We know it’s a lift, but if you come through for us, we will celebrate you like the heroes you are.  You will never have to buy a drink for yourselves in Rockville ever again.  And if you don’t come through, you will not be served a drink in Rockville ever again!”  Good performance must be rewarded.  Bad performance must be met with accountability.

One more thing: the delegation has an ace card.  Senate President Mike Miller and Speaker Mike Busch are not going to run the General Assembly for much longer.  Successors to their thrones are making the rounds and lining up votes, however quietly.  The MoCo legislators should tell all of them that whoever gives the county the best deal on schools will lock up all their votes.  It’s huge leverage that should not be wasted, but it will only be used if it pays off in political terms.  Team MoCo’s job is to make sure it does pay off so the Big Bacon gets served.

County Executive

This is the most critical person in this entire endeavor.  Every team needs a Captain.  In MoCo, that has to be the Executive.  This individual is the county’s spokesperson and the one everybody else will inevitably look to for leadership.  The Executive must be a troubleshooter who works out periodic squabbles between the different members of the family, charts out a general course on budgets and state action and makes sure everyone gets the credit they deserve.  Most of all, the Executive must be a LEADER.  The lesson from the aftermath of Weast is that without central leadership, everything can fall apart.  If we pick the right Executive, that won’t happen and Team MoCo can succeed.

And so if everything works out, everyone wins.  The county gets its fair share from the state.  MCPS stakeholders get the funding they need.  MCPS employees get fair compensation and the resources they need to do their jobs.  The elected officials get to be heroes.  And the county as a whole will maintain its status as one of the best places to live on Planet Earth.

We can do it, folks.  Yes we can!  If you agree, ask the candidates how they intend to play on our team and keep it in mind for Election Day.  Team MoCo will only come together if the voters demand it.

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Adam Pagnucco, MCPS, schools

No-Win Situation: Council Angers Two Influential Groups at the Same Time

By Adam Pagnucco.

Suppose you’re a County Council incumbent gearing up for the next election.  There are eight months to go.  The economy isn’t great.  A big, unpopular tax hike was passed a year ago.  Seventy percent of the voters just voted for term limits.  Dozens of challengers with all kinds of messages carrying the powerful weapon of public financing are fanning out through the county.  So what do you do?

There may not be a lot of good options these days, but antagonizing two of the more powerful groups in the county would not be a high priority on anyone’s list.  And that’s what happened last Tuesday.

The pebble in the council’s shoe this time was debt service.  Much of the county’s six-year capital budget is financed by bonds, and of those, the biggest single financing source for projects is General Obligation (GO) bonds.  GO bonds are not tied to specific revenue sources as some other bonds are; rather, they are backed by the full faith and credit of the county.  The county is rightly proud of its AAA GO bond rating, the highest rating offered by credit agencies, and kept it even through the terrible years of the Great Recession.  But maintaining a AAA rating, which allows the privilege of paying the lowest interest rates on the market, is difficult.  When a local jurisdiction carries too much debt relative to its resources, it risks a downgrade and higher interest rates.  County leadership is justifiably careful about this and has acted to protect its bond rating in the past.

Recently, County Executive Ike Leggett requested that the council cut the level of GO bonds issued in future years, saying that the current amount is excessive and might be regarded as a credit risk.  Last Tuesday, the council unanimously voted to cut the six-year issue of GO bonds from $2.04 billion (the level in the last capital budget) to $1.86 billion.  On an annual basis, GO bond issuances would decline from $340 million in FY18 to $300 million in FY22-24.

The concerns of the Executive and the council about GO bonds are legitimate.  Bonds are paid off through debt service, which is part of the operating budget and competes with other types of spending.  But debt service is a different kind of spending than any other county expenditure.  Once bonds are issued, they MUST be paid one way or the other or the alternative is default.  Below is the recent history of county debt service payments in comparison to the total tax-supported budget.  Debt service roughly doubled between FY05 and FY18.  As a percent of the tax-supported budget, it fell from 7.3% in FY04 to 6.0% in FY09, but has since risen to 8.5% in FY18.  If it keeps rising, it will eventually squeeze out money for public schools operations, public safety and a range of valuable services.

Much of the increase in debt service has been driven by school construction.  The county’s six-year capital budget in FY05-10 included $786 million in local funding for school construction.  By the FY17-22 capital budget, that total had risen to $1.4 billion.  That’s real money, folks!  And while the state kicks in school construction money too, it could do a better job of it.

The council’s cut of GO bonds is normally the kind of action that occurs after an election, not right before one.  Now the county’s elected officials are in trouble with two influential groups.

The PTAs

The Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) have one of the largest networks in the county.  Almost every one of the county’s 200 or so public schools has a PTA.  Most have groups of officers and many have volunteer committees.  Perhaps most importantly, most have listservs with parents on them.  No one really knows exactly how many parents are on the PTA listservs, but it is at least in the thousands.  The PTAs don’t endorse candidates, but they have a large latent communication capacity to inform parents about the actions of politicians.  Accordingly, they are one of the great sleeping giants of county politics.

Perhaps the number one issue for the PTAs is school construction.  Last year, they strongly supported a recordation tax increase proposed by Council Member Nancy Floreen that was marketed at the time as being mostly intended to pay for more schools.  The size of that tax hike (roughly $200 million over six years) is close to the size of the present cut in GO bond issuances ($180 million over six years).  That suggests that the tax hike will be at least partially supplanted and – after capital money is moved around – will now be effectively used to reduce future debt service, not to finance additional school construction as the council promised.  That is not going over well with the PTAs.

The Realtors

The Realtors are one of the most active political players in the county, especially inside the business community.  They spent $45,000 on direct contributions to county-level candidates in the 2014 cycle – including to County Executive Leggett and eight winning council candidates – and spent tens of thousands more on mailers promoting their endorsees.  Nonetheless, they were targeted by the recordation tax increase and fiercely resisted it.  If the increase were marketed as paying down debt service, which now could be the case through the backdoor, the PTAs would never have come out to support it and it would probably have died.  Now the rationale used to defeat the Realtors – school construction – has been put in question by subsequent action of the council.

The PTAs and the Realtors may have disagreed about the recordation tax hike, but they may now both see it alongside the GO bond cut as a bait and switch.  One big group got a tax increase it didn’t want.  The other big group may not get the spending increase it did want.  Neither group is happy.

So here’s the question.  What happens next?

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schools, transportation

When You’re In a Deep Hole

By Gaithersburg City Council Member Neil Harris.

In a recent meeting with the capital improvements team at MCPS, I suggested that it would take $1 billion in extra capital funding to provide enough classrooms and to fix dilapidated schools. The staff responded that the number was more like $2 billion or more. Ouch.

My guess was based on the basic cost for classroom space of $40K per student. So, an elementary school for 750 kids would cost $30 million. And we have 9,000 kids in portables ($360 million worth of classrooms) and we’re adding 2,500 new students each year ($100 million). I guessed at double that for renovations, but apparently that number is way worse than my rough guess.

In transportation, the situation is even worse. Not only is our system the most congested in the country, but in 25 years the congestion is projected to be 72% worse! In the past 15 years, we’ve added several hundred thousand new residents to the mid- and up-county, and the population will grow by 20%. We’re not keeping up.

The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) made projections based on the regional long-range plan, which includes all the projects proposed and expected to be funded. The TPB recently looked at the 500 projects proposed but not expected to be funded, and building all of them “only” makes congestion 28% worse. I repeat: building every project proposed still makes congestion 28% worse!

One problem for the TPB is that the projects on their list are proposed by local jurisdictions: the states, counties, and cities, and are most often focused on local needs. There is no central authority over regionally significant ideas that will serve to improve transportation for everyone.

Another challenge is that there is such a huge focus on new transit that it crowds out roads. If you build a new Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) on a Metro Station and 60% of the new residents use Metro, then there are still 40% of the new residents in cars. One mode is not enough, and the current plans look like they are out of balance, with the vast majority of trips by auto in 25 years but most funding going to transit and not highways. To be clear: in 25 years with $100 billion spent on transit in our region, we increase ridership by 2% for work trips, with a huge increase in auto trips and little improvement in our road network.

The TPB bravely took it upon ourselves to develop a list of 10 “potentially game changing” projects, programs, and policies to study, to learn if there are ways to actually reduce congestion instead of surrendering to it. This has been a controversial process thanks to inclusion of a new northern Potomac crossing, but the TPB has recognized that desperate times require desperate measures.

So, where would the money come from to fix these problems, assuming we find good answers and the political will to address them?

For transportation, Northern Virginia has taken the lead. The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority collects a small surcharge on some taxes to create $330 million in new funding to reduce congestion. Under this new program, the state and the local jurisdictions are not allowed to reduce transportation funding, so the money goes directly to new programs.

For schools as well as transportation, Adam Pagnucco suggested that Montgomery County’s annual revenue grows by about $140 million each year due to increased income and property tax revenue. How about dedicating all this growth to infrastructure for the next few years, instead of operations? In five years or so, we could be all caught up.

These aren’t the only ways to get out of the hole. We could build schools like the Monarch Global Academy in Laurel, which cost one-third to one-half what MCPS spends on each school. That would stretch our dollars. We could look at the cost-effectiveness of transportation projects already in the pipeline and refocus on ones that make more of a difference.

I hope with the big election year in Montgomery County next year, we can direct the candidates to solve these big challenges as their top priority. We need to understand what projects will actually help and then find ways to pay for them.

Whatever we do, we know one thing – when you are in a hole, first stop digging.

Neil Harris is Vice President of the Gaithersburg City Council and a voting member of the Transportation Planning Board and TPB’s Long Range Plan Task Force.

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Adam Pagnucco, Montgomery County Public Schools, schools

Five Facts About MoCo School Construction Funding

By Adam Pagnucco.

School construction has been one of the hottest issues for years in Montgomery County.  Enrollment in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has been increasing by close to 2,000 students a year for a decade with no sign of stabilizing.  The result is crowded schools throughout the county.

According to the Superintendent’s FY18 Recommended Capital Budget, 109 of MCPS’s 197 schools were over capacity in the 2016-2017 school year.  Of those, 35 had enrollments of at least 120% of their capacity.  Even if the Superintendent’s request is fully funded, by the 2022-2023 school year, 87 schools will be over capacity and 29 will be at least 120% capacity.  Overcrowding will continue because construction will not keep pace with enrollment, which is projected to grow by nearly 10,000 students over that period.  MCPS is using 388 relocatable classrooms this year, a number that has not changed much over the last five years despite significant spending on school construction.

Over 80 percent of MCPS school construction costs are paid by county taxpayers with the remainder coming from state aid.  Here are five facts about school construction that all MoCo residents should know.

  1. MCPS enrollment is growing faster than the rest of the state COMBINED.

According to the Maryland State Department of Education, September enrollment in MCPS grew by 15,036 students between 2005 and 2014.  Over that period, public school enrollment in the rest of Maryland SHRANK by 543 students.  MCPS’s absolute increase and its growth rate (11%) were both first in the state.  Other systems are growing too (notably Howard and Anne Arundel) and all counties have maintenance requirements.  But in terms of new capacity needs, MCPS is in a category of one.

  1. MoCo gets less school construction money from the state per student than all but a handful of other counties.

Over the five-year FY13-17 period, MoCo received $201.7 million in state aid for school construction, just ahead of Baltimore County and tops in the state.  That’s a substantial amount of money.  But relative to its September 2014 enrollment, MoCo’s construction aid per student ($1,306) ranked 18th of 24 jurisdictions.  MoCo had 18% of the state’s public school students but received just 13% of state construction dollars, the biggest gap in the state.

  1. The state’s funding formula discriminates against school construction in MoCo.

The state finances a percentage of eligible costs for school construction projects approved for state aid with the local jurisdiction paying the rest.  MoCo is one of seven jurisdictions for which the state covers 50% of funding for school projects approved by the Board of Public Works, the lowest rate available.  Other jurisdictions including Prince George’s (63%) and Baltimore City (93%) receive much higher cost splits.

  1. State legislators from the City of Baltimore extracted a billion dollars from the state for their school construction program.

In 2013, Governor Martin O’Malley and the General Assembly’s presiding officers made passing a revenue increase for transportation a high priority.  Despite the fact that one of the projects to be funded was Baltimore’s $2.9 billion light-rail Red Line, city legislators withheld their votes until they got more money to rebuild their aging schools.  (City school enrollment fell between 2005 and 2014.)  The result was a new seven-year billion-dollar state aid program for city schools that greased the wheels for the transportation funding hike.  The city delegation’s work shows that significant progress can be made on this issue.

  1. MoCo residents are now paying a new tax hike in part to fund school construction.

Last May, the Montgomery County Council approved a recordation tax increase on home sales projected to raise $196 million over six years.  The council justified the tax hike on the grounds that $125 million of the money was supposed to be spent on school construction.  No recent media reports indicate that any other Maryland county has raised local taxes for the explicit purpose of financing school construction.

Disclosure: Your author’s son attends Flora Singer Elementary School in Silver Spring.  Despite opening just four years ago to relieve overcrowding at nearby Oakland Terrace, the school is already over capacity.

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