Maryland General Assembly alters Blueprint education plan: Here's what changed

Yahoo

08-04-2025

With a little more than five hours before adjourning, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation Monday evening to alter the Blueprint for Maryland's Future. The change maintains funding for community schools but bumps collaborative time implementation.
'This session has seen dramatic progress restoring the vast majority of the proposed cuts to our schools and ensures that everyone pays their fair share and more sustainably funds our public schools and services,' Paul Lemle, the president of the Maryland State Education Association, said in a statement after Senate lawmakers voted to approve the bill.
Both the Maryland House and Senate chambers approved the bill, which was negotiated following differences in approach to amend the bill presented by Gov. Wes Moore earlier this year.
The legislation was passed largely along party lines and with limited discussion.
The legislature was tasked with contending with a $3 billion-and-growing budget deficit at the start of the 2025 legislative session. Understanding Maryland's tough fiscal situation, the Moore administration offered a bill to stop funding increases for community schools, or schools that receive Concentration of Poverty Grants, for two years and pause the implementation of teacher collaborative time and its associated funding increases for four years.
Collaborative time is afforded to teachers for curriculum planning, grading and professional development outside of the classroom.
The House approved Moore's bill in early March, but not without completely restoring the community school funding and reducing the collaborative time implementation from four years to one.
The Senate struck a balance between the governor's proposal and the bill as it passed out of the House, restoring the community school funding increases in full, but maintaining Moore's four-year pause on collaborative time implementation.
The negotiated bill now heads to Moore's desk for his signature, restores the funding increases for community schools and allows collaborative time funding to go to local school boards for fiscal year 2026. However, collaborative time funding increases would be paused for fiscal years 2027 and 2028.
'While there is a delay to increased funding for collaborative time implementation, the final bill is a significant improvement over where this conversation began in January,' said Lemle.
House Republicans applauded the collaborative time pause.
'It does move in the right direction,' Del. Matt Morgan, a St. Mary's County Republican, said. 'We support that delay.'
Because there is a pause in collaborative time increases, the legislation headed to Moore also reduces the amount of foundation spending per pupil because funding tied to collaborative time is baked into that formula.
Should Moore approve the bill, this per-pupil decrease would not impact spending for special education, English learners, or students most at risk of not succeeding academically, or students at the Maryland School for the Deaf, the Maryland School for the Blind, or the SEED School of Maryland.
House Majority Whip Jazz Lewis, a Prince George's County Democrat, said Monday night that leadership in his chamber is 'proud' to stand with their colleagues in the Senate and governor's office on where the bill landed, especially considering the federal cuts to education spending recently implemented by President Donald Trump's administration.
'I think we're proud to stand arm-in-arm with our colleagues in the Senate and the governor in having a plan that doesn't cut core services to kids across the state, maintains the gains we're making through the Blueprint and doubles down on our promise that every child in every zip code is going to get a quality education,' Lewis said.
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