Darren Lombardo - Delmarva Parent Teacher Coalition
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The Wicomico County Board of Education approved $1,275,298.61 in annual portable classroom leases for the 2024-2025 school year. Although portable classrooms should only be needed here or there, this reveals a much larger problem that they're not telling the taxpaying citizen: "you're being exploited."
Below you can see the transactions at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year:
In addition, thousands upon thousands of our tax dollars are being put into replacing HVAC systems for these portables that the WCBOE doesn't even own. They have voted in past meetings to approve such costly replacements to improve someone else's property.
Our school buildings don't have the capacity. Our schools have had an influx of nearly 2,500 migrant students (mostly undocumented) that have been relocated to Wicomico by the Biden Administration. Accounting for approximately 17% of school enrollment, this has over capacitated our schools and stressed our local resources.
For the 2024-2025 school year, there were 2,463 Multilingual Learners (ML) enrolled in Wicomico County Public Schools as of last November. There are probably more today. This number was revealed at the Wicomico County Board of Education Special Meeting/Work Session that was held on November 19, 2024.
Below are the student demographics of MLs in Wicomico County Public Schools:
Presentation slide from WCBOE Special Meeting/Work Session that was held on November 19, 2024.
Wicomico County Public School received approximately $20,000 per pupil according to their 2024-2025 annual budget.
Of this amount, our county has to pay what's called Maintenance of Effort (MOE), which is the county contribution to educate a child in public school. This costs Wicomico County taxpayers $3,512 per pupil.
For Wicomico county, that's a migrant total of $8,650,056 for the 2024-2025 school year. As for the state and federal portion of the per pupil cost, that accounts for $40,609,944. That's a total of $49,260,000 to educate 2,463 migrants, and that's not even the grand total.
In addition to the per pupil cost, the cost to provide capacity in the schools is separate from the per-pupil calculation, which adds a tremendous expense to the taxpayers.
Additional resources required: the portable classroom leases, maintenance of portables, electricity, HVAC, extra staff, ESOL services, meals, wraparound services for their families, etc.
The school system receives additional funding and grants for the purpose of addressing undocumented migrants. This means more money for the school that goes above and beyond what they typically receive for the education of a local citizen. The teachers' union also profits from more member dues with the added staff. They all profit from the exploitation. Therefore, it's kept quiet. The only ones that don't profit are the taxpaying citizens.
It means that your taxes are going up.
Fellows & Editors
February 8, 2025
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