The top leader for Howard County Public Schools is asking for $1.278 billion in his new operating budget.

This fiscal year 2027 request is $61.9 million (or 5.1%) higher than the previous year's operating budget.

Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) superintendent Bill Barnes unveiled the new budget to the public on Thursday.

It's the first budget created since the release of Barnes's strategic plan, and he said it really guided the strategy to target and better learning outcomes for certain student groups.

While there will be a net reduction of four staff positions, a lot of positions are slated to be repurposed under this budget.

A more targeted approach

In his presentation, Barnes said he aimed to approach this budget differently.

"This year we are intentionally reframing budget challenges instead as opportunities to rethink how we do business, so we can better advance our strategic priorities and improve outcomes for our students," Barnes said.

The budget's investments target to better learning outcomes for two student groups: students with disabilities and multilingual learners.

To help these students, Barnes is pitching to invest more than $11 million in special education and increase special education staffing by around 23.

There are also plans to reallocate a number of paraeducator positions. Many paraeducators at all school levels will be repurposed to better help these students, or in some cases, be converted to teaching positions.

Barnes assures those who aren't a fan of their repurposed role, or who have lost their job, will have the opportunity to stay in the school district.

That's important for Ben Schmitt, president of the Howard County Education Association (HCEA), which is the educators' union.

"Everybody we have works hard for the school system. We certainly don't want to lose those folks. We know that they are key to student success no matter what," Schmitt said. "We just want to make sure that everybody that's affected, even though it's a much smaller number than in years' past, that they have a safe place to land within the school system."

Barnes noted the need to do this because these students consistently lag behind their peers academically. 

Referring to data from the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program standardized testing, or MCAP, Barnes noted 20% of special education students showed they were proficient in English Language Arts, while 11% were proficient in math.

Multilingual learners saw similar numbers: 12% showed proficiency in English Language Arts, while 10% showed proficiency in math.

"The main reason we are repurposing any position is to redirect existing services more strategically to serve students whose performance, over decades, whose attendance, over decades, and discipline data, over decades, reveal they could use the greatest support," Barnes said.

Barnes said he and his team are treating this budget as the first step of a multi-year plan, that'll include future budget cycles, to better the school district along the strategic plan priorities.

Other investments

Overall, the budget totals $75.5 million in priority investments.

More than $53 million in new funding is penciled in for staff investments, nearly $18 million of that is for dealing with rising health care costs.

13 certified athletic trainers are also listed in the budget, a notable item that many of the school district's student athletes advocated for last budget cycle. Athletic trainers were cut at the last minute to balance the budget last year.

Next steps

There will be a series of work sessions that go into each of the budget's priorities in more detail.

These are the dates for those work sessions; they all begin at 1 p.m.:

• Jan. 15
• Jan. 22
• Feb. 5
• Feb. 19

There are two public hearings scheduled, both begin at 7 p.m.

• Jan. 29
• Feb. 9

The Board of Education is slated to adopt an operating and capital budget by Feb. 26, however, the board could also adopt a budget on March 3.

You can see the proposed budget in full here.