ROCK HALL — To “right size” the budget for fiscal year 2026, Kent County Public Schools needs to eliminate 36 positions, Superintendent Mary McComas told the Board of Education at its regularly scheduled meeting Monday night, April 14.
According to McComas’ draft budget presentation, KCPS is facing an approximately $2 million deficit between revenue and expenditures for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2025.
The school system is expected to bring in $30.9 million in funds from local, state and federal sources, but has projected expenditures of $32.7 million.
McComas said the bulk of KCPS’ budget goes to personnel with 75%, or a little more than $25 million, earmarked for salaries, insurance and pensions.
She said to balance the budget she reduced non-personnel expenses, implemented a hiring freeze, authorized retirement incentives and economized operations, such as requiring sports teams to share a bus to out-of-county games.
With those cost savings, including the elimination of positions, the budget deficit would drop to $1.8 million.
If nearly $1 million is moved out of its fund balance, leaving only $500,000 in reserve which is Board of Education policy, the deficit drops to a little more than $800,000.
“There is nothing more valuable than our people,” McComas told the board. “The first thing I tried to do was reduce the things that were not our people … but there is no way to close this funding gap without reducing positions.”
She said she would be going to the Kent County Commissioners in May to present the budget and request the additional $800,000 in funding.
McComas said she recognized that the school system was not the only entity relying on the county for funding, and the commissioners could not fund every request.
School board President Trish McGee pointed out that the school system takes up the largest amount of the county budget. In her opinion, McGee said, if the commissioners vote to not increase funding it is not because they do not care about the school system.
McComas acknowledged that there was no way to reduce positions without it impacting students. Currently the class size for more than 40% of classes in grades six through 12 is 15 students, she said. With the elimination of teaching positions, the average class size for those same grades would be between 15 to 22 students, depending on the class enrollment.
She said the aim is to preserve smaller class sizes at the elementary level as much as possible, but there was no way to guarantee that there would not be a larger class depending on student enrollment at the grade level.
Kent County’s superintendent said the main factors for the drop in revenue are a declining student enrollment and the loss of emergency funds awarded to the school system after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our revenue, as is the case for every school system, is based on the number of students. As our enrollment grows, our revenue grows. As our enrollment declines, our revenue declines. That drives the state and local funding that we get,” McComas said. “Over the last five years we, as all school systems have, benefited from the COVID emergency grant funds. For us that was a grand total of $15.8 million. But, those funds are gone.”
McComas said the reason the school system was able to get by the past five years without cutting positions, even while enrollment was declining, was because of those pandemic-related emergency funds.
“Without those funds we would have had to reduce positions every year,” she said.
Now that those funds are gone, the school board needs to “right size our budget to reflect our student enrollment,” McComas said.
Board Vice President John Queen asked if there was data to explain why KCPS lost students, and if declining enrollment numbers were expected to continue.
McComas said that on average 71% of students who leave KCPS are moving out of the county or the state.
She said that the Maryland Department of Planning is projecting Kent to lose 40 students over the next four years.
Student member of the board Alden Swanson asked if there would be a loss to programs because of the loss of COVID grants.
“I’m looking to not cut programing for students, that is what I am striving to do. It is one thing to adjust the level of service, another thing to take away direct programming,” said McComas.
In the next few weeks, McComas said she plans to hold meetings with staff at each school as well as the community.
“I have a lot of respect for our teachers, and I should be accountable to them. I want to give them a chance to ask questions,” she said.
McComas called the elimination of the 36 positions a “significant and seismic shift,” one that was unfortunately necessary to craft a budget more in line with student enrollment numbers.
A public hearing on the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget will be held on Monday, April 28 at 5:30 p.m. in the board meeting room of the KCPS administrative building, 5608 Boundary Ave., Rock Hall.
McComas will hold a town hall-style public meeting — virtually and in person — on Thursday, May 1 beginning at 6 p.m. when she will answer questions regarding the budget.
The Board of Education will hold a special meeting on Monday, May 5 at 5:30 p.m. to vote on the budget.
The following day, McComas will present the budget to the Kent County Commissioners.
A copy of the draft budget PowerPoint presentation as well as the budget draft book can be found online under the agenda for the April 14 Board of Education meeting under the Superintendent’s Report, FY2026 Budget Presentation at https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/kcps/Board.nsf/Public.
Trish McGee, owner and publisher of The Evening Enterprise, is an elected member of the Kent County Board of Education currently serving as president. She did not contribute to this report.
