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Students attending Montgomery College next academic year will have to pay more than they anticipated for tuition due to cuts County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) has proposed in his fiscal 2011 budget.

Due to limited funds from the county, the board of trustees agreed during its April 19 meeting in Rockville to increase next year's tuition by $5 per credit hour for students who live in the county; $10 for students who live in Maryland, and $15 for students who live out of state, according to college information.

That means students living in the county would pay $107 per credit hour; students living in the state would pay $219; and out-of-state students would pay $299.

In February, the college's board of trustees approved a tuition increase of $3 for students who live in the county; $6 for in-state students; and $9 for students who live outside the state.

A month later, Leggett proposed a $4.3 billion spending plan that contains $13 million less for Montgomery College than what officials sought for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Besides raising tuition, school officials are considering furloughing employees.

On Tuesday, interim college President Hercules Pinkney said the school is considering a furlough of four to 10 days for its employees, depending on whether the County Council restores some of the money cut from its proposed budget. Employees with higher salaries would be required to take more furlough days than those employees with lower salaries, Pinkney said.

"There's no money, so we're trying to ask students to come up to the plate and help to a certain extent," Michael C. Lin, chairman of the trustees board, said of the tuition hike. "With this kind of cut, nothing can be spared. There's just no other way around [it,] because we're taking all kinds of cost-saving measures into account."

Next year, college officials wanted the county to contribute $108.1 million to the college's $223 million operating budget, but Leggett's budget proposes the county spend $93.6 million on the community college.

In a memo to the trustees board, officials said they would continue to push the council to fully fund the school's budget, but "it is anticipated that there will be little, if any, available funding to help close the college's budget gap."

The County Council has the final say on the county budget in late May.

Residents ask school board

for use of technology

Roughly 20 people, most of whom are learning to speak English through a program at Montgomery College, asked the county school board Monday night for permission to use computers and other technology in public school classrooms.

The school system's technology — such as the much-publicized Promethean SmartBoards — would help the residents gain a better understanding of English, they told the school board.

"In the same way those computers help children learn, they can help adults learn," Alain Bangnam, a student in the Montgomery College program, told the school board.

The residents take the language classes at night and on Saturdays in the public school buildings. Bangnam, along with English instructor Todd A. Pusey, also told the school board that the students can't use the technology because the county's Interagency Coordinating Board for Community Use of Public Facilities says Montgomery College would have to pay a high fee for someone to monitor the use of the technologies.

The students also said they asked the ICB to train Montgomery College personnel to monitor the use of the technology, but the agency hasn't been receptive to the idea.

"We think this is wrong, because it doesn't make sense to charge us a lot of money that we do not have, when all our students want to do is learn English so that they can become more integrated in the culture and society of the United States," Pusey wrote in his testimony to the school board.

On its website, the ICB prohibits the use of the school system's Promethean SmartBoards by community residents. According to the agency, the boards are only supposed to be used by authorized school system personnel. Residents who damage the boards are responsible for their repair and/or replacement, according to the ICB website.