Senate panel's vote on Blueprint bill straddles House, administration versions

Yahoo

22-03-2025

Senate Budget and Taxation Committee voted Friday for amendments to the Blueprint for Maryland's Future that splits the difference between House and administration versions. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
A Senate committee advanced parts of Maryland's sweeping education reform plan Friday, splitting the difference between versions of the bill advanced by the House and the Moore administration and setting up a showdown in the waning days of the legislature.
The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee approved a four-year pause in the start of funding for teacher 'collaborative time' — something the administration supports — but also voted to keep funding for community schools — something the House insisted on.
Senate Bill 429 still needs to be taken up by a second Senate panel, the Education, Energy and the Environment Committee, which is scheduled for Monday. That gives lawmakers just two weeks to approve a Senate bill and hammer out differences with the House before the April 7 end of the General Assembly session.
The so-called 'Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act' was sparked by the state's fiscal crisis and by the repeated call from local school officials for flexibility in the implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, the sweeping 10-year, multibillion-dollar education reform plan.
Gov. Wes Moore introduced a bill that keeps the goals of the plan largely intact, but delays funding and implementation of some portions.
One portion is the proposal for an increase in teacher 'collaborative time,' or time that teachers spend on planning, training and working with individual students, as opposed to time in front of a classroom. The Blueprint calls for teachers' classroom time to be cut from 80% of their day to 60%; the administration bill would delay the start of that for four years, in part because it would require the hiring of at least 12,000 new teachers at a time when the state faces a teacher shortage.
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The House rejected that plan, and set collaborative time to begin in 2026. But the Senate went with the governor's version in what Budget and Taxation Committee Chair Guy Guzzone (D-Howard) called a 'pacing' of the initiative.
'Whenever you don't extend the full amount, if, in fact, you want to get to the full amount, by definition, it has to go out further,' Guzzone told reporters after the committee's vote.
The committee did agree with the House version and rejected the administration's call for a two-year freeze on funding for community schools, those located in low-income neighborhoods Sen. President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) has said such a delay would negatively affect students.
The Senate committee also agreed with the House to 'hold harmless' funding for multilingual learners, students in poverty and those in special education — exempting those students from any per pupil funding reductions that might come down. The committee on Friday also added students at the Maryland School for the Blind, Maryland School for the Deaf and the SEED School of Maryland.
The committee was more generous than either the House or the administration when it comes to Consortium on Coordinated Community Supports, a part of the Blueprint plan that deals with mental health, behavioral and other wraparound services for students. The House agreed with the governor that it should be cut from $130 million this year to $40 million in fiscal 2026, but senators want to cut the fund to $70 million next year and raise it to $100 million in fiscal 2027 and each year after.
But senators sided with the administration on 'foundation' funding, or per pupil spending. Under the Blueprint, it was slated to grow from $8,789 per pupil this year to $9,226 next year, but the administration proposed reducing the growth to $9,063 next year and slowing the pace of growth for several years after. The Senate committee agreed, but the House voted to keep the original Blueprint funding levels.
With an eye toward looming cuts to the federal government, another Senate amendment made Friday would freeze funding increases if federal funds or revenue projections by the state's Board of Revenues in December decrease by 3.75%.
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Senate Majority Leader Nancy King (D-Montgomery), a member of the Budget and Taxation Committee, earlier this week defended delays in Blueprint goals for the time being.
'There's a lot of good that's already come out of the Blueprint, and a lot more that is going to come as we go,' King said Tuesday. 'I don't think it would be a bad thing if we just slowed it [collaborative time] down a bit.'
The Senate Education, Energy and the Environment will review, and possibly vote on, the other parts of the bill Monday that deal with teacher programs, initiatives and other incentives before sending it to the full Senate for consideration and then back to the House.
Del. Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said during a press conference Thursday to announce a framework for the overall fiscal 2026 budget, that negotiations on the Blueprint are ongoing. But Atterbeary said she and Del. Ben Barnes (D-Prince George's and Anne Arundel), chair of the Appropriations Committee, have made their positions 'pretty clear.'
'Where we stand and where the House stands in … protecting those that are most vulnerable, particularly those in community schools,' she said. 'So we'll see what the Senate does, and we'll link up with them and negotiate that in the days to come.'