Washington County Public Schools board adopts revised FY26 revenue scenario; restores Cascade principal to 12 months

Washington County Public Schools Board of Education members on May 20 reached consensus to move forward with a revised FY26 revenue scenario after the district received about $5.52 million in additional state and local aid, and after the county proposed moving the school bus replacement purchase into its capital improvement program.

The agreement would preserve a suite of program additions the board had discussed — including a scaled elementary and middle summer-school/tutoring program, a phased ConnectED virtual option for elementary grades, 70 student apprenticeship positions, and a modest bus-driver hire — and would allocate $2,240,000 identified from the bus replacement shift toward the district’s OPEB/fund-balance options while directing the remaining new revenue into the district’s salary/resource pool pending final calculations and legal research.

Why it matters: district staff described the combination of new state aid and the proposed county CIP change as “historic.” Dr. Spine, speaking for district staff, said the package “is what I consider to be pretty historic increases dating back to nearly two decades,” and presented options the board could use to balance program additions, personnel costs and long-term obligations.

Budget context and what the board considered District staff told board members that at the last meeting the working gap for FY26 had been about $17 million above FY25 levels. New developments in Annapolis and subsequent revenue corrections increased that figure by about $5.5 million, bringing the roughly stated change in resources to about $22.5 million compared with the prior year. Staff broke the expected additional revenue into roughly $12 million from the state and a little over $10 million from local sources, and corrected an earlier…