ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — After a lengthy back-and-forth deciding what stays and what goes, the Howard County Board of Education is sending a budget proposal worth just over $1 billion to the county executive.
The proposal added much back to the budget, but not everything could stay.
A group of parents walked out of the Thursday meeting upset; their kids may not get elementary school gifted and talented and third grade strings, which were budgeted out except in schools with 40 percent or more students receiving free and reduced meals.
"I want them to reconsider what they did today," said Corinne Happel, a parent.
"Families like mine, who choose to pay Howard County taxes, chose to live here because of the school system," Happel said, "and so a lot of us are really thinking, this really might not be the right place for families like ours."
The board approved a budget proposal, which took multiple tries to agree on, working to make up a gap of roughly $100 million.
"We would love to have restored everything," said Jennifer Mallo, the school board's chair. "We know we won't get adequate funding to do so."
Mallo said the board did add a fair bit back into their budget, which could have been slated for cuts in an original proposal by the superintendent.
The board heard 12 hours of public comments from stakeholders on the budget, Mallo said, and thousands of testimonies.
"We know that this is hard. None of us want to make these choices. None of us want to be in a position where we're having to choose program A over program B," Mallo added.
Ben Schmitt, the leader of the Howard County Education Association, raised concerns with WMAR that teacher pay was not discussed during the meeting and is still worried about losing teachers to other counties.
“The budget is fracturing the community through programs it desires to keep, and the Board of Ed has not done its judiciary responsibility by looking more closely at categories and funding in the original proposed budget," Schmitt told WMAR.
The proposal is not the final budget; the county executive submits a full budget next month. Then the board and the county government work together to make something final in May.
