Issue Brief
Fully Funded Schools
We don’t need to wait to deal with school crowding, understaffing and old, failing facilities. When we fully fund our schools, they will be the best in Maryland.
#1
Fastest growing county in Maryland
…with per-pupil funding that lags behind slower-growing counties.
Whether a student lives in the city or the countryside, whether they’re highly motivated and ambitious or need structure and support to meet their goals, whatever their race, gender and ability, our school system should offer them gold standard education.
FCPS can and should lead the state and region in key metrics across districts and subgroups, special education accommodations and career and college readiness. Per the most recent Maryland Report Cards released by the state, Frederick County schools perform significantly higher than Maryland schools at large. In other words, they outperform their funding, since our per-pupil funding lags behind that of counties that are not growing as quickly as Frederick County. We need to collectively decide we are willing to invest in the people who make our schools excellent.
Investing in our school workers starts with paying teachers and support staff salaries that are regionally competitive and aligned with the local cost of living; our school workers should be able to afford to live in our community. It also means having enough educators and instructional assistants to meet students where they are, whether they need more support or more challenging curriculum, and regardless of what district they live in. FCPS workers have muscled through years of underfunding, relying on their resourcefulness to deal with the impact of chronic vacancies, overflowing classrooms and extra classes and shifts. We can’t keep calling our schools’ challenges “growing pains” — it’s time to acknowledge that these are chronic issues arising from underfunding.
01
Investing in People
02
Funding Our Schools
Appropriate funding for FCPS should proactively account for anticipated student growth. As the fastest growing county in Maryland, Frederick County should lead the charge in addressing the “one day a year” student enrollment counting practice that consistently leads the state to underfund our schools. As a County Council member, I would join our schools’ unions in advocating for a state formula that actually keeps pace with Frederick County’s student growth throughout the school year.
Frederick is one of four counties in Maryland that does not currently impose a business personal property tax. I support a business personal property tax on data centers, but I believe we should also tax large corporations within our county for their assets, and not rely on a single industry for business tax revenue. Just as the majority of resident tax revenue goes to support our school operating expenses, I think we should consider using business tax revenue to close funding gaps in our school system’s operating budget and bring it up to the Superintendent’s recommendation. Every year brings more new residents to Frederick County. Because population growth is exceeding our County’s capacity to school our kids, as both a macro-control and a means of generating adequate revenue I would like to look into raising the recordation tax (preserving its current exemptions) to help fund school capital projects.
03
Brunswick High School
Speaking of school capital projects, Brunswick’s high school students, teachers, maintenance workers and staff have waited far too long for a decent school, and our community is indebted to the local residents who have tirelessly advocated for the new Brunswick High School. As your County Council member, ensuring timely delivery of the completed high school will be a top priority among capital projects.
04
Redistricting
I support the FCPS prerogative to limit redistricting wherever possible; it is disruptive for students’ sense of community as well as their families’ supporting routines. It adds busing costs and strain for bus drivers, whose sector we already struggle to properly staff. An alternative to redistricting and staggered scheduling is reorganizing how students are assigned to buildings; divide the student population into smaller grade cohorts that can fit into smaller buildings the County could buy and repurpose as schools. Existing buildings can often be retrofitted on a faster timeline than a new school build would demand, and sometimes more cost-effectively. Unlike redistricting, reorganizing which grades are schooled together keeps the children within the same community and grade in the same district. Student populations will likely have growth spurts in the coming decade as Covid babies enter kindergarten, making the demand for flexible solutions more important.