In a MoCo360 piece Opinion: Full funding for MCPS is key to county’s future prosperity, Christine Handy (president of both Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals and Montgomery County Business Operations Administrators) and Jennifer Martin (president of the teachers’ union) make a claim that “fully funding” the school district results in prosperity.
Regarding ethical bias, both Dr. Handy and Ms. Martin draw their salaries from the school budget. We have here a clear case of conflict of interest, as any increase in the school budget winds up in their pockets and the pockets of their friends and relatives. In absolute terms, more winds up in their pockets than those pockets belonging to lower-paid teachers.
If you are able to look past that ethical bias (and I’m struggling), Handy and Martin give their motivation for fully funding the schools.
Our public schools have traditionally been the engine driving economic prosperity and livability here in Montgomery County for decades. Businesses and families relocate here to take advantage of the excellent learning opportunities for young people and the highly qualified workforce our schools produce.
(Any social scientist would wonder if proximity to high-paying federal jobs also contributed to prosperity, so we’ll wait until Handy and Martin are able to isolate those two effects.)
Regardless, here we have some honesty: the purpose of having a top-notch public school system is to enhance prosperity and livability. That means educating our students is a means toward an end, an approach that I find perfectly acceptable. My preferred mission statement articulates that educating our students is a means toward giving them the tools to live in an increasingly dark and polarized world, but Handy and Martin see economic activity as the end. Fair enough.
If we want to maximize the county’s economic viability, how do we know that a school system is the way to achieve that goal?
The following table from the Census Department and Niche shows the relationship between school ranking and population changes in Arlington, Fairfax, and MoCo.
| Fact | Arlington | Fairfax | MoCo |
| Niche ranking | 301 | 878 | 431 |
| Niche Score | A+ | A | A |
| Population estimates, July 1, 2023, (V2023) | 234,162 | 1,141,878 | 1,058,474 |
| Population Estimates, July 1, 2022, (V2022) | 233,678 | 1,139,309 | 1,053,067 |
| Population estimates base, April 1, 2020, (V2023) | 238,642 | 1,150,294 | 1,062,065 |
| Population estimates base, April 1, 2020, (V2022) | 238,642 | 1,150,294 | 1,062,065 |
| Population, percent change – April 1, 2020 (estimates base) to July 1, 2023, (V2023) | -1.9% | -0.7% | -0.3% |
| Population, percent change – April 1, 2020 (estimates base) to July 1, 2022, (V2022) | -2.1% | -1.0% | -0.8% |
| Population, Census, April 1, 2020 | 238,643 | 1,150,309 | 1,062,061 |
| Population, Census, April 1, 2010 | 207,627 | 1,081,726 | 971,777 |
All three counties have lost population since 2020. Arlington’s school district is arguably better than MoCo’s, yet the population decline is felt there as well as here. This observation gives us a data point indicating that improving the school district’s quality will not prevent population decline. There are other factors at work towards reducing the county’s economic output. Remote working is arguably one of them.
Moreover, the end of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief, federal funding that this year was used to fund ongoing responsibilities, leaves the school system struggling to maintain the basic level of services our students need and deserve in the 2024-2025 school year.
Here is where we have a problem with critical thinking. The ESSER funds Handy and Martin mention were earmarked explicitly for COVID-related expenditures; it was never meant to fund “ongoing responsibilities” as they claim. If those funds were used to pad salaries and positions, we may have a problem somewhere on the spectrum between fungibility and embezzlement. There is no reason to ask taxpayers to make up lost COVID funds when COVID is over.
Martin’s union demanded that remote learning continue far past what was mandated in other large school districts, while local private schools were allowing partial, rotating attendance. Add to that the predation, nepotism, federal investigation into anti-Semitism, and violence afflicting the school district, can anyone really believe that Handy, Martin, or any other entrenched execucrat has any ethical right to demand higher property taxes for a declining school system that they helped engender?
I could be wrong, of course, and here’s how we can tell: for every dollar Handy and Martin raise on gofundme.com on behalf of the schools, the county allocates a matching dollar. That would be a very good indication regarding how believable or hollow their reasoning is.
