Latest news with #Bill429
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Moore's bill to rein in Blueprint school reform plan draws fire at hearing
Fagan Harris (center), chief of staff to Gov. Wes Moore (D), at a hearing on the administration's schools bill. He is flanked by Mike Thomas, the governor's deputy legislative officer, and Carmel Martin, special secretary of the Governor's Office for Children. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters) Kent County Schools Superintendent Mary McComas had just finished criticizing lawmakers for proposed cuts to the Blueprint for Maryland's Future in the Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act, when she was gently corrected. House Appropriations Committee Chair Ben Barnes (D-Prince George's and Anne Arundel) thanked McComas for her service as a superintendent, then politely made a point. 'Just to be clear. This is not the legislature's bill. I just want to be clear about that,' Barnes said, drawing a few chuckles and smiles from others at the hearing on the Moore administration bills. Senate Bill 429 and its companion, House Bill 504, were the subjects of a four-hour joint hearing that brought together four legislative committees. In addition to Appropriations, members of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Budget and Taxation and Education, Energy, and the Environment committees were on hand to hold a joint hearing in the state's newly opened Department of Legislative Services building. Scores of teachers, students and advocates turned out for the hearing and dozens testified against the bills, which would defer some elements of the multibillion-dollar, 10-year Blueprint plan in the face of a $3 billion budget shortfall next year — which is expected to grow worse as a result of budget cuts expected from the Trump White House. One person who was not on hand to testify was Gov. Wes Moore (D) who sent aides instead, to the disappointment of some at the hearing. 'I am frustrated,' Ways and Means Chair Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard) said in a text message after Wednesday's hearing. 'It is a significant bill proposing significant changes to the BP [Blueprint]. I think his in-person support of his legislation would have been good to see.' Mary Pat Fannon, executive director of the Public School Superintendents' Association of Maryland, said she was surprised the governor didn't take the opportunity to testify before the four House and Senate committees. 'It is very rare to have four committees have a joint hearing. I thought they were trying to accommodate him,' said Fannon, who does not support the bills. 'You don't want to read too much into it, but you have to look a little bit into it.' Instead, Moore Chief of Staff Fagan Harris spent about an hour summarizing the administration's bills and stressing the governor's overall support for the Blueprint. 'I want to be put crystal clear: This governor is committed to seeing the Blueprint through. That's why we're proposing this legislation,' Harris said. 'We think it maps to the realities we're seeing at the federal level,' he said. 'It maps the realities of the historic fiscal crisis we're currently navigating together and services implementation imperatives of the law, and yes, also makes the law more succinct.' Harris said the Blueprint is currently funded through next year, which could open the door to deficits thereafter. The changes proposed in the governor's bill would help put the Blueprint on more sustainable footing, he said. Harris said the administration bill calls for 'a pause' in funding for 'collaborative time,' a goal of the Blueprint that would eventually reduce teachers' time in the classroom from 80% of the day to 60% to allow for more planning, training, individual work with students and more. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE The Blueprint calls for implementation of collaborative time to begin next year, but Harris said that would require the hiring of another 12,000 to 15,000 teachers at a time when the state is already grappling with a teacher shortage. 'Because of this shortage, it is not currently feasible to implement collaborative time in a way that would yield the intended benefits for student achievement,' Harris said. The bills would delay collaborative time for four yars, which would allow school districts more time to recruit and retain teachers. In the interim, the administration bills include funding for several alternate teacher and administrator programs, such as a Grow Your Own initiative to expand teacher and staff pipelines, boost diversity in the profession and establish apprenticeship programs. The administration bills would also keep funding for community schools — those in areas of concentrated poverty — at its current level for two years. Harris defended the level funding for community schools, noting that the administration has pushed to increase the number of such schools from 447 to 715, and has more than doubled funding, from $227 million to $490 million this year. One of the few voices in support of the governor's bill was State Schools Superintendent Carey Wright. 'We must ensure that the collaborative time policy does not unintentionally decrease the instructional time for students or negatively impact academic performance,' Wright said in written testimony to the committees. Sen. Mary Beth Carozza (R-Lower Shore), a member of the Senate 'Triple-E' committee, said she supports the pause in collaborative time — but thinks the state could face unintended consequences if it rushes into creating collaborative time. Carozza is sponsoring a bill – Senate Bill 791 – that would keep the current 80% classroom time for teachers. A hearing on that measure is scheduled for Friday. But Moore's proposal to freeze funding for community schools — which get a high concentration of poverty-based grants such as the number of students who receive free and reduced-price meals — did not sit well with several lawmakers. Atterbeary called the proposal 'a cut' — despite Harris' characterization of it as a pause — and said the legislature just approved community schools legislation last year. Sen. Cory McCray (D-Baltimore City), who serves on the Budget and Taxation Committee, said when he visits community schools he sees 'young scholars that looked like me.' McCray, who is Black, asked Harris if the administration has conducted research on student demographics in those community schools. 'This is not about cutting programs already in motion that are already in motion making a huge difference in the lives of kids,' Harris said. 'We see this as a chance to better leverage the program and the dollars going into it and letting effective implementation keep up with our pace of investment.'
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Educators defend planned leadership academy to train principals, county school leaders
State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright, center, testifies Thursday with Krishna Tallur, left, the deputy superintendent for finance and operations, and Donna Gunning, assistant superintendent for finance. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters) Education officials defended a planned 'leadership academy' for would-be principals and county board leaders, telling lawmakers Thursday that the program is needed to grow a 'pipeline of highly trained and effective school leaders.' The comments came during a hearing before House Appropriations subcommittee which was considering a legislative analyst's recommendation that funding for the academy be cut in half next year, from the $6.3 million in Gov. Wes Moore's proposed budget to $3 million. Department of Education officials said they 'respectfully disagree.' 'The academy will focus on developing school leaders, focusing on school leaders of color and those that serve high-poverty schools and low-performing schools,' said Krishna Tallur, deputy state superintendent for the department's Office of Finance and Operations, in testimony to Appropriations Subcommittee on Education and Economic Development. The cuts to the academy were among several recommended for the budget of the Education Department's headquarters, including a proposed reduction to the proposed Concentration of Poverty Grant program, from the budgeted $3 million down to $2 million next year. That is another cut with which Education Department witnesses said they 'respectfully disagree.' Both the poverty grants and the leadership academy are called for in the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, the sweeping 10-year education reform plan that has emerged as an early battleground in the state's fight to close a projected $3 billion gap in the $67 billion state budget for fiscal 2026. Teachers' union lobbies lawmakers to fully fund Blueprint, among legislative priorities The Blueprint, and the governor's budget, call for the creation of a leadership academy next year under the Department of Education at a cost of $6.3 million. 'That's something we don't have in the state at all,' State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright said in an interview after testifying to the subcommittee. 'The idea behind our leadership academy was [to look] for aspiring leaders … across the state and provide the training to help them be ready on day one.' But legislative analysts noted that the state has already started a training program this year for state and local superintendents, at a cost of $3 million. With that money being spent beginning in January 2025, the analysts recommended 'level funding' the academy next year at the same level. The academy and school system training initiatives are components of a School Leadership Training Program proposed by Moore as part of his 'Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act,' submitted last month as Senate Bill 429 and House Bill 504. The Senate version is scheduled for a joint bill hearing Feb. 19 before the Budget and Taxation and the Education, Energy and the Environment committees. The House bill will be heard jointly by the Appropriations and the Ways and Means committees, but a hearing date had not been set as of Thursday. Moore's bills have so far drawn more attention for what they would not fund, than for what they would. The governor's education plan calls for a four-year delay in funding for teacher 'collaborative time' — out-of-classroom time when teachers plan, get training, work individually with students and more. But that will require the hiring of more teachers to free up classroom time. The Blueprint currently calls for collaborative time funding to begin next year, at a cost of $163 per student, growing annually until it reaches $1,527 per pupil by fiscal 2033. Moore's bill would maintain the funding levels, but delay them for four years, but push the starting date back to fiscal 2030, with the program running through fiscal 2037. The pause, as administration officials call it, is due to a statewide teacher shortage. While teachers and some state lawmakers have come out against the delay in collaborative time funding, Wright and Isiah 'Ike' Leggett, the chair of the Accountability and Implementation Board overseeing implementation of the Blueprint, both say a pause makes sense. The AIB voted last month to recommend a pause in collaborative time. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Leggett noted Thursday that at least 12,000 more teachers would be needed to implement collaborative time next school year, a number that doesn't include the 6,000 teachers who are currently working with a conditional license. 'That's a huge challenge. This plan cannot be implemented as intended given those numbers,' Leggett said to the committee. 'There is no plan that I have seen that will change these numbers overnight.' But education department officials did disagree with one cut that is in both the governor's plan and the legislative analyst's recommendation — the reduction in funding for the Concentration of Poverty Grant program. The state has more than 700 schools designated as community schools, which would receive concentration in poverty grants, based on the number of students who receive free and reduced-price meals. The analyst's report would cut $1 million from the budget to administer the grants while the governor's budget would freeze funding for community schools, a cut the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland doesn't support. The education department's overall budget is proposed to increase by nearly $15 million, or 4%, to $388 million from this current fiscal year.
