Superintendent Taylor, Quit Your Bellyaching
Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Taylor took to video on Friday to lament the county council’s FY27 budget straw votes as a “mixed bag” and “frustrating.” The council’s preliminary framework delivered a $143 million year-over-year increase for MCPS. That's $36 million short of the district’s ask. Taylor called the needed adjustments “awful” and warned of significant impacts on students. “It is really just exhausting,” Taylor bemoaned, referring to the annual budgeting process.
You know what's really exhausting? Taylor's bureaucratic melodrama. The $36 million gap represents less than 1 percent of MCPS’s multi-billion-dollar operating budget. It is more like a rounding error than an existential threat.
Taylor’s message to staff reeks of entitlement. He offers gratitude for “creative solutions” that saved “hundreds of jobs,” followed by complaints that explaining the system’s value has become an annual ordeal. He could spare himself, and everyone else, the pain by coming forward with realistic budgets rather than shooting for the moon and whining when his orbit is less than one degree off trajectory.
MCPS requested $3.775 billion for FY27, a 5 percent increase over the prior year’s budget, even as enrollment continues to decline. Over the past seven years, MCPS has lost nearly 9,000 students while adding more than $1 billion to its spending.
When enrollment drops, a responsive system should right-size central administration, consolidate underused programs, reduce non-essential consultants, and adjust staffing ratios. Instead, Taylor treats baseline budgets as untouchable and any trim as a classroom emergency. He got 99 percent of what he wanted and still complains about the consequences of a predictable council path to get there: a one-time fix that kicks problems to next year. Predictable because that's what happened last year, in a far less politically charged environment. Taylor's surprise is a farce; he knew no one had the stomach for Marc Elrich’s proposed tax increases to fund the full ask.
Taylor’s contract started at $360,000 annually. For that kind of money, residents deserve conservative budgeting from a leader unafraid of difficult choices. Instead, we have Taylor rallying employees with tales of exhaustion over a 1 percent adjustment. Real leadership would zero-base programs, aggressively cut central-office bloat, prioritize core instruction, and demonstrate value through results rather than sob stories.
Montgomery County deserves excellent public schools. It can afford them without pretending every modest restraint is a catastrophe. A $36 million reconciliation in a nearly $3.8 billion enterprise amid falling enrollment is not a crisis. Superintendent Taylor and the board should stop the theatrics, find the fat, deliver efficiencies, and focus on students instead of protecting every layer of the bureaucracy.
