The Montgomery County school system was the big winner in a modest six-year capital improvement plan released by County Executive Ike Leggett Tuesday.

Facing down a tough economic forecast, Leggett proposed a $3.2 billion plan for improving the county’s infrastructure. Nearly half of that, or $1.4 billion, will go to the county’s public schools, which have begun to face aging facilities and necessary technological upgrades in recent years.

Leggett’s plan offers a 1.1 percent overall increase but still increases school construction funding by more than 17 percent. It fully funds Superintendent Jerry D. Weast’s $266.6 million request approved by the Board of Education in December for fiscal 2009 but cuts $75 million from the capital improvement budget during the subsequent five years.

Weast Chief of Staff Brian Edwards said the superintendent is “very pleased” with the proposed 2009 budget but added that projects in later years would be evaluated to determine what would be cut.

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“We’re going to have to inevitably delay some projects,” Edwards said.

Still, the full funding of the fiscal 2009 capital improvement budget, which now goes to the Montgomery County Council for approval, would allow the system to begin additions at nine elementary schools and continue with other renovations and modernizations. Weast has set a goal to reduce the number of portable classrooms from the 462 currently in use to 260 by 2013.

School board member Steve Abrams said he wasn’t surprised by Leggett’s budget proposal with regard to the schools Tuesday since the system’s perennially high rankings are a huge point of pride for the county.

But neither was Abrams surprised at how tight the county executive’s overall budget was.

“My guess is Ike Leggett is reading [Gov. Martin] O’Malley’s approval ratings and is taking a very cautious approach,” Abrams said, referring to recent poll numbers that showed O’Malley’s approval ratings had dropped dramatically because of tax increases intended to offset the state’s budget woes.

cmabeus@dcexaminer.com