January 14, 2026 Staff and Community Update: FY 2027 Proposed Operating Budget Preserves Critical Investments and Prioritizes Compensation Enhancements for Staff
Dear Team BCPS—
Yesterday evening, I presented a $2.49 billion operating budget proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 to the Board of Education. I also provided highlights of the proposed budget request to elected officials, school and central office administrators, and stakeholders on Jan. 12. If you missed last night’s presentation, you can watch it online.
The proposed budget maintains strategic investments in core priority areas that will enable our system to continue its forward progress and prioritize the recruitment and retention of our dedicated workforce through compensation enhancements. We are building upon the major investments made in Team BCPS over the past two years and are unwavering in our commitment to improve educational outcomes for all BCPS students and provide them with the opportunities and resources needed to meet their full potential.
The budget recommendation represents an overall $57.3 million increase in the General Fund budget (2.8 percent) and includes a projected increase of $19.9 million (2.0 percent) in alignment with the targeted increase that County Executive Kathy Klausmeier has pledged. The requested increase will support salary increases for all BCPS employees and help maintain operations at the highest level. We are prioritizing salary increases for staff in direct alignment with feedback from you and Team BCPS stakeholder groups.
We spent the last several months engaging members of Team BCPS in conversation about the budget and priority areas for our system, providing detailed information about the budget process, including sources of BCPS funding and how it is spent. We have specifically highlighted that 82 cents of every dollar in BCPS is used for employee wages and benefits, while the remaining 18 cents is used to cover all system operations.
Every dollar counts. We are seeing the results of our strategic investments across multiple external measures of performance. This level of growth does not happen by chance. It takes dedicated staff members who are locked in on providing the highest levels of instruction, support, services and care. We must stay the course.
Difficult decisions had to be made for this budget proposal. This is the third consecutive year where we were faced with a tough fiscal landscape because of the continued expansion and implementation of the state’s Blueprint initiatives and anticipated lower federal, state, and local revenue. To address these budget challenges, we put several budgeting elements in place for FY 27 including: no new initiatives unless required; hiring freeze for central office and non-school-based positions; review of all contracts for renegotiation/reduction/elimination; and zero-based budgeting. With these targeted efforts, we identified $62.1 million in cost savings and reductions to fund FY 27 priorities. These reductions include position reductions, costs offset to Title I and other grants, IT reductions, and modest changes to current staffing allocation formulas that will slightly increase class sizes. It is important to note that there will be no layoffs of BCPS school-based and central office staff. These cost savings are in addition to the $168.9 million in reductions that we have made over the last two fiscal years.
The next steps in the budget process include the Board’s public hearing on Jan. 20 at 6:30 p.m. Members of the Team BCPS community can sign up to provide feedback on the proposed budget. The Board will then hold two operating budget work sessions, Jan. 27 and Feb. 10, where they will have an opportunity to discuss my proposed budget in depth and ask questions. The Board is scheduled to vote on the budget request on February 10 and it will then be sent to the county executive and county council for their review and action. I remain committed to working with the Board of Education, County Executive Klausmeier, members of the county council and lawmakers in Annapolis as the budget moves through the process.
I encourage you to stay engaged and involved in this process. Visit our Operating Budget webpage and the Budget 101 webpage to learn more about the budget process.
Thank you for your support.
Regards,
Myriam Rogers, Ed.D
Superintendent
Resources
Proposed FY 27 Operating Budget Book
Watch the presentation
View the presentation slides
Budget 101
FY 27 Operating Budget At A Glance