House committee rejects Blueprint cuts, in first step toward showdown with Senate
Signs in support of the Blueprint for Maryland's Future at a Feb. 10 rally outside the State House. Proposals to rein in parts of the plan were rejected Friday by a House committee in the first of what is likely to be many votes on the issue this session. (File photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
And so it begins…
The House Appropriations Committee on Friday reinstated many of the cuts proposed by Gov. Wes Moore (D) to the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, the state's multiyear, multbillion-dollar education reform plan.
Friday's vote was the first step in what is likely to be a long — and what has been a long-expected — clash between the House, the Senate and the Moore administration over what parts of the state's signature education plan can be retained in the face of a projected $3 billion gap in the fiscal 2026 budget.
Moore's House Bill 504, the Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act, proposed delaying funding for community schools, those schools with high concentrations of low-income students. He also proposed a delay in implementation of 'collaborative time' – a plan to boost teaching ranks so that teachers could spend less time in the classroom and more time on planning, training, working with students out of class, and more.
In 10 minutes of work Friday, the Appropriations Committee kept the community schools and collaborative time funding on track. It also voted to keep the Academic Excellence Fund, which can accept private-sector donations for a grant fund used by local school systems, and to give local school systems flexibility in when they start the collaborative time, among other changes.
Moore's bill to rein in Blueprint school reform plan draws fire at hearing
The amended bill passed on party lines, with all Democrats voting for it and all Republican voting against it except Del. Joshua Stonko (R-Carroll), who did not vote after explaining the 'complexity … in the personal views I have and the impact on Carroll County.'
Stonko, who has referred to the 'Blueprint to Bankrupt Maryland's Future,' is opposed to the costly collaborative time proposal, but noted that doing away with it now could have the effect of leading to class sizes of upwards of 50 students to one teacher in parts of Carroll County. It would also lead to the loss of reading, math and media specialists in those schools.
'This is a really complex bill for me because I'm trying to think about my general view on budget and tax and spend and all of those issues, and then the impact to my jurisdiction and thinking through those,' Stonko said before the vote. 'I may continue to think about this for another day, and we'll see on that context, but I just wanted to say for my constituency it's a really complicated bill for Carroll County.'
After the vote, Del. Ben Barnes (D-Prince George's and Anne Arundel), the chair of the Appropriations Committee, thanked Moore for the bill that he said included innovative 'policy ideas … [that] will certainly strengthen the Blueprint and the intent of the original Blueprint.' Barnes said those ideas were bolstered by the committee amendments that make the administration's proposals 'even stronger.'
But that's not the last word on the bill, even in the House. HB504 was jointly assigned to Appropriations and to the Ways and Means Committee, which held a joint hearing with Appropriations on the bill but has yet to announce a vote.
Once the bill gets out of the House, it goes to the Senate, where leaders in public have been more in line with the administration on the need to rein in the Blueprint for now in the face of the state's mounting budget problems.
The Senate version of the bill was also jointly assigned, to the Budget and Taxation Committee and the Education, Energy and the Environment Committee. Those two committees were also part of the joint hearing with the two House committees on the bill last week, but neither Senate panel has announced a voting session on the measure.
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Miami Herald
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Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
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Approximately 19 percent of NPR member stations count on CPB funding for at least 30 percent of their revenue — a level at which stations would be unlikely to make up if Congress approves the rescissions, according to an NPR spokesperson. Ed Ulman, CEO of Alaska Public Media, predicts over a third of public media stations in Alaska alone would be forced to shut down 'within three to six months' if their federal funding disappears. PBS CEO Paula Kerger said in an interview she expects 'a couple dozen stations' to have 'significant' funding problems 'in the very near term' without federal funding. And she believes more could be in long-term jeopardy even if they survive the immediate aftermath of the cuts. 'A number of [stations] are hesitant to say it publicly,' she said. 'I know that some of our stations are very, very worried about the fact that they might be able to keep it pieced together for a short period of time. But for them, it will be existential.' 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In remote areas without reliable broadband or internet coverage, public media stations can be the only way for residents to get natural disaster warnings or hear information about evacuation routes. After Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina last year, leaving the region without electricity for days, Blue Ridge Public Radio in Asheville, North Carolina, provided vital information on road closure and access to drinking water for people using battery-powered and hand-cranked radios. 'I think it's pretty catastrophic,' Sherece Lamke, president and general manager of Pioneer PBS in Granite Falls, Minnesota, said of the potential consequences of losing the 30 percent of her station's budget supplied by CPB. Station managers around the country have made direct pleas to their home congressional delegations in the past year, urging them to protect public broadcasting from the rescission proposal and publicly opposing Trump's executive order calling on CPB to stop providing funding to stations. PBS, NPR and some local stations have sued the Trump administration to block the order. Brian Duggan, general manager of KUNR Public Radio in Reno, Nevada, said he's optimistic about the chances of the House voting down the funding cuts, particularly after talking with his local member of Congress, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), who co-signed a statement opposing cuts to public media on Monday. 'I maintain optimism … based on my conversations with the congressman,' Duggan said. 'I will just hold out hope to see what happens ultimately on the House floor.' Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, whose public media stations are among the most dependent on federal grants in the country, told POLITICO on Wednesday she's concerned about stations in her state and is trying to get the package changed. In the wake of Trump administration pressure, some stations have seen an uptick in grassroots donations. But while larger stations in well-populated metro areas have broader, wealthier donor bases to draw on for additional support, many rural stations can only expect so much help from their community. Some of the stations in rural areas are forced to navigate the added complication of asking for donations from Republican voters as Trump rails against the public media ecosystem. 'We live in a very purple district up here,' Sarah Bignall, CEO and general manager of KAXE in Grand Rapids, Minnesota said. 'If we started kind of doing the push and the fundraising efforts that were done in the Twin Cities, it would be very off-putting to a lot of our listeners.' Increases in donations, sponsors and state funding — only some states fund public broadcasting, and other states are pushing their own cuts to public broadcasting — would be unlikely to cover the full loss of smaller stations with heavy dependence on federal grants. 'It's not like we can just go, you know, 'Let's find a million dollars somewhere else.'' Lamke said. 'If we knew how to do that, we would have.' Longtime public media employees have experience in managing the lack of certainty that comes with the nonprofit funding model. But some said that the federal cuts, along with the White House effort to eliminate the public media model, have made forecasting the future of their stations more difficult than ever. 'I think this is the biggest risk that we've had, certainly in the time that I've been in public broadcasting,' Kruger said. 'And I've been in this business 30 years.' Calen Razor contributed to this report.
