MCPS officials warn staffing and training shortfalls are limiting supports for students with disabilities and multilingual learners

Montgomery County Public Schools officials told the County Council's Education and Culture Committee that growing caseloads, persistent staffing shortages and gaps in professional development are constraining the district's ability to deliver evidence-based interventions for students with disabilities and emergent multilingual learners (EMLs).

Diana Wiles, Associate Superintendent for the Office of Special Education, said the district has increased special-education identification by roughly 3% over eight years and currently lists 24,403 students receiving special-education services. Wiles and other speakers described several operational consequences: vacancies prevent certificated staff from billing Medicaid for some services (reducing reimbursements), the district relies on contractual services when positions go unfilled, and shortfalls require central-office trade-offs to cover immediate costs.

Tamara Hulett, director of the Department of English Learners and Multilingual Education, reported 32,587 current EMLs and explained how WIDA screener and ACCESS assessment rules affect who counts as meeting growth targets. She said about 17,000 students are at beginning proficiency (WIDA levels 1—2) and that elementary EMLs meet growth targets at higher rates than middle (20.5%) and high school (27.1%) students, a gap the district attributes to students entering in later grades and to differences in school structures and available instructional time.

Paraeducators and training

Sally Murick, vice president of the paraeducator chapter of SEIU Local 500, told the committee there are about 5,200 paraeducators districtwide (623 temporary part-time at the time cited) and urged converting TPT positions to benefited roles, raising pay, and expanding professional development. She said underfunding has left students and staff at risk of injury and turnover.

District leaders listed strategies under way or proposed: grow-your-own pipelines with local universities, targeted summer and follow-up professional learning for secondary content teachers, train-the-trainer approaches to scale instruction, Title III-funded vendor supports for high-school biology and government for EMLs, community schools/wraparound partnerships and more school-based coordination of supports. Multiple speakers emphasized that one-off trainings are insufficient: "One-and-done doesn't work," Peggy Pugh, Chief Academic Officer, said, arguing for sustained coaching and school-level follow-up.

Staffing numbers and constraints

Wiles said special-education teacher vacancies fell from roughly 80 last year to about 25—30 this year after targeted international recruitments, but she cautioned those hires may not be repeatable. Hulett said the nationally recommended staffing ratio for ELD instruction is about 1:12; MCPS is operating at roughly 1:40 for that specialized instructional time. MCPS leaders said the superintendent's budget proposals include converting many TPT para positions to benefited roles and funding professional learning, but they also cautioned that budget choices and state/federal funding changes will shape which steps are feasible.

Committee members pressed for clearer data on absenteeism, assessment non-participation (Hulett estimated ~800 non-test takers last year) and the costs of proposals; MCPS staff said some numbers were in the packet and agreed to follow up.

Provenance

This article synthesizes the MCPS presentation and the committee's subsequent question-and-answer exchange (topic introduction: SEG 176; topic finish: SEG 3443).