By Michael Phillips| MDBayNews
Two months after Montgomery County Public Schools eliminated dozens of social worker positions to close a $36 million budget shortfall, the district is advertising for a new school “storyteller” and content creator — with a salary range topping out at $171,348 a year, more than double what a starting MCPS teacher makes. A second communications opening posted the same week pays up to $50.62 an hour. Parents and mental health professionals online are asking the obvious question: how does a district that just told families it couldn’t afford its social workers suddenly have room for two new content jobs?
What actually got cut in June
“How does a district that just told families it couldn’t afford its social workers suddenly have room for two new content jobs?”
The numbers on the layoff side are well documented. Facing a $36 million gap between what Superintendent Thomas Taylor requested and what the Montgomery County Council approved for fiscal year 2027, the Board of Education voted 7-1 on June 4 to eliminate 415 positions systemwide. According to WTOP and Bethesda Magazine’s reporting on the vote, the cuts included 43 social workers and 27 pupil personnel workers — the specialists who work with schools on attendance, discipline, and homelessness — along with family engagement specialists, media assistants, English composition assistants, and maintenance staff.
The board did restore some positions after public pressure: 18 school psychologists, 15 staff development teachers, and roughly 26 college-and-career navigators were saved from the chopping block (reporting on the exact navigator figure varies slightly between 26 and 27). Board President Grace Rivera-Oven called the vote “incredibly personal, excruciating and painful.”
One social worker at the meeting, Cecily Barbee, testified that she and her colleagues are licensed clinical professionals trusted by students, staff, and parents alike — support, she said, that software cannot replace. Roughly 90 percent of the MCPS budget goes to personnel costs, which is why Taylor has said staffing cuts were largely unavoidable once the county funded the district $36 million short of its request.
What’s now being advertised
Against that backdrop, two job postings circulating on X this week caught parents’ attention. The first, “FY27: Regions Support Team Leader,” calls for a storyteller and content creator who will visit schools, shoot photos and video, and help publicize school and staff achievements — essentially an in-house journalist for the district.
The listed wage range is $120,412 to $171,348 a year. The second, “FY27: Communications Specialist, Social Media Marketing,” is a part-time (8 hours per week, 12-month) role in the Department of Communications, paying $34.32 to $50.62 an hour to manage MCPS’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X presence and track engagement metrics across those platforms. Both postings are visible on MCPS’s own job portal; the communications specialist listing closes August 13.
“The top of the Regions Support Team Leader’s pay band is more than double that of a starting MCPS teacher.”
For comparison, Maryland’s Blueprint law requires a starting teacher salary of at least $60,000 statewide as of 2026, and MCPS’s own FY2026 salary schedule lists a starting step of $64,591 for a new teacher with a master’s degree. The top of the Regions Support Team Leader’s pay band is more than double that.
What MCPS hasn’t explained
To be fair to the district, job postings and layoffs don’t necessarily draw from the same funding line — school systems commonly fund communications, grant-writing, or federally reimbursed positions differently than school-based support staff, and MCPS has not said whether these two roles are new hires, backfills of existing vacancies, or funded outside the general operating budget that absorbed the June cuts.
MCPS did not respond to the social media criticism with an on-the-record explanation as of this writing. But the district has already faced criticism this year for a lack of budget transparency — Montgomery County Councilmember Evan Glass, who is running for county executive, said in June that “we truly don’t know where half of our county budget goes because it goes to MCPS,” and called for a full-time board staffer and a County Executive appointee dedicated to reviewing MCPS budgets more closely. Absent a clearer accounting from the district, the optics of the timing — content-creator job ads landing while laid-off social workers were still job-hunting — are doing the explaining MCPS hasn’t.
“Absent a clearer accounting from the district, the optics of the timing are doing the explaining MCPS hasn’t.”
This is the same pattern Maryland Bay News has tracked in Montgomery County before: a February analysis of federal staffing data found MCPS added 1,769 employees between 2018 and 2024 even as enrollment fell, with district administration and central-office staff growing four times faster than the teaching ranks. A communications department expanding its content operation while the district’s front-line student-support staff gets cut is, on this record, less an aberration than a pattern.
“A communications department expanding its content operation while front-line student-support staff gets cut is, on this record, less an aberration than a pattern.”
Sources: This article draws on WTOP’s, Bethesda Magazine’s, NBC4 Washington’s, WUSA9’s, and Montgomery Community Media’s reporting on the June 4, 2026 MCPS Board of Education vote to cut 415 positions and the specific job categories affected; The Baltimore Banner’s reporting on the same vote and MCPS’s personnel-cost structure; Montgomery County’s official June 2026 “Montgomery Update” newsletter; MCPS’s FY2026 employee salary schedule (montgomeryschoolsmd.org); the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future’s teacher pay provisions; MCPS job postings for “FY27: Regions Support Team Leader” and “FY27: Communications Specialist, Social Media Marketing” as posted to the MCPS careers portal (screenshots reviewed August 2026); and Maryland Bay News’ prior reporting, “More Bureaucrats, Fewer Students: What’s Really Happening Inside MCPS?” (Feb. 19, 2026), X post from @Dawn_LCPC pulled on August 7, 2026.
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