Rockville, Md. -- As Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) welcomes back nearly 160,000 students for the 2025-2026 academic year, the district is advancing key changes focused on improving how we operate and support students’ success.

Key improvements this year are:

• Strengthening grading and reporting practices for clarity, fairness and truly measuring student learning. Learn more.
• Updating our Student Code of Conduct to set and clearly communicate expectations, and to provide a positive framework for addressing behavior that needs redirection. Learn more.
• Revising cell phone procedures systemwide that ensure more learning time and less screen time. Learn more.
• Implementing enhanced safety practices in all of our spaces by updating our standard response protocol and conducting security assessments in our Middle Schools and High Schools. Learn more.
• Introducing "The Refrigerator Curriculum," a new resource that gives families an overview of what their student is learning each marking period. Learn more.

Furthermore, MCPS is expanding its support by adding more staff in special education, security, and for students learning English. And for the first time, we introduced Transition Day to give students who started at new schools or grade levels a chance to begin their year with confidence by providing a sneak peak at their new schools and to meet teachers and principals.  See images from Transition Day in MCPS here. Watch how Transition Day went at Paint Branch High School in our new Instagram reel (English; Spanish).

These updates are part of the district’s longer-term commitment outlined in the MCPS 2025–2030 Strategic Plan, Future Ready. The plan calls for every student to graduate ready to thrive in a changing world, with the knowledge, skills and confidence to lead, adapt and make a positive impact. Grounded in the district’s core values of learning, respect, relationships, excellence and equity, we are working towards 100% of schools earning four stars or higher on the Maryland School Report Card, raising proficiency rates for students who have historically faced opportunity gaps and graduating at least 95% of all students each year.

The 2025-2026 school year will continue the important work of boundary study and program analysis from the district. Continued outreach is planned through events, surveys and school-based communications to gather additional community input before final recommendations in each of these important pieces of work are presented.

Operationally, MCPS is well-prepared to serve our students. The system is 93.51% staffed (as of 8/22/2025), with an educator in every classroom on day one. Equally important we are fully staffed in our transportation division for the 2025-2026 school year. Our team includes over 14,133 school-based teachers and a team of 1,289 bus operators. Recruitment efforts continue, as they do throughout the year, to identify and attract suitable candidates to work with students and to support operational excellence.

To share the positive energy of this new beginning, we've created a special video. Watch it here to see how we're kicking off the school year.